Exoplantets Could Be Hiding Something Beneath Their Surface That Boosts Possibility of Alien Life | UAP

New research suggests that planets once assumed to be covered in massive global oceans may be more Earth-like than earlier models predicted, according to findings showing that water may be more likely to exist underground on many exoplanets rather than flooding their surfaces.

Many known exoplanets located near their stars have surfaces covered in magma oceans. In these environments, water dissolves into the molten silicate layer surrounding an iron core while carbon dioxide rises into the atmosphere.

Now, a research team led by Caroline Dorn, Professor for Exoplanets at ETH Zurich, in collaboration with Haiyang Luo and Jie Deng at Princeton University, has published a paper providing new insights into the unique role water plays in this process.

Molten Exoplanets and Earth’s Hidden Water

Four years ago, a team began to examine the interactions between water, iron, and silicates in an earlier study that simulated conditions on the young Earth to understand how water would behave under such conditions. Surprisingly, the simulations suggested that water equivalent to 80 of Earth’s oceans could be trapped beneath the surface. Subsequent experiments and seismological measurements supported these findings. Dorn’s team then explored what this might mean for the water thought to cover the entire surface of some exoplanets.

The current method for…