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Extrasolar planets

Water on distant worlds

Nature volume 448, pages 143–145 (2007)Cite this article

Is the presence of water a feature common to all gas-giant planets? The first convincing detection of water vapour in the atmosphere of such a planet from outside our Solar System indicates that the answer is yes.

Gas-giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in our own Solar System — generally form at large distances from their parent star. Here, radiation is less intense, and so water and other low-mass elements and compounds, such as methane, can be more easily accreted in the form of ices onto the newly formed protoplanet. This process explains why the Solar System's gas giants contain significantly larger quantities of water than does the relatively rocky planet we call home. The rule is expected to hold for gas giants outside our Solar System, which we presume formed through similar processes. Until recently, however, the only planets we were able to study in the necessary detail were those in our own backyard.

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  1. Heather A. Knutson is in the Department of Astronomy, Harvard University, 60 Garden Street, MS 10, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. hknutson@cfa.harvard.edu,

    Heather A. Knutson

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  1. Heather A. Knutson
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Knutson, H. Water on distant worlds. Nature 448, 143–145 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/448143a

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