‘Beach resort' planet with '20C sea' could be future astro-tourist hotspot – but you may be DEAD by the time you arrive
Although this world is relatively close to our own in cosmic terms, it would still take 41 years to get there - while travelling at the speed of light
NICE PLAN-ET 'Beach resort' planet with '20C sea' could be future astro-tourist hotspot – but you may be DEAD by the time you arrive
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window)
Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
THERE are planets beyond our own that could be hiding untouched paradises.
Exoplanet LHS 1140 b is just one of them - and could make a great beach resort for astro-tourists of the future.
Sign up for Scottish Sun
newsletter
Sign up
4
With a possible ocean temperature of 20C (68F), this planet could host some epic beach days in a few millennia - if humans ever master interstellar travel
Credit: B. Gougeon/Université de Montréal
4
Even the closest of exoplanets are too far away to visit with today's technology
Credit: Getty
First unveiled in 2017, LHS 1140 b is 41 light-years away, and may be humanity's best chance of finding liquid water on a world outside our solar system.
There's one pretty big hitch, however - anyone boarding a rocket destined for LHS 1140 b would likely die long before they arrived.
If they don't, then they would probably be very old, and not quite up for the water sports that could be on the cards.
Even the closest of exoplanets are too far away to visit.
And although this world is relatively close to our own in cosmic terms, it would still take 41 years to get there - while travelling at the speed of light.
Of course, we haven't yet mastered light speed travel - let alone anything faster.
But with a possible ocean temperature of 20C (68F), this planet could host some epic beach days in a few millennia - if humans ever master interstellar travel.
Last year, after falling under the James Webb Space Telescope's keen eye, scientists were able to find out more about this distant world.
They believe it is a potentially rocky world, much larger than Earth.
Best-ever sign of ALIEN life found on distant planet as scientists '99.7% sure of astounding biological activity signal'
It has a planet mass of 5.6 Earths and a year that lasts just 25 days, according to Nasa.
Data gathered by JWST, the $10 billion telescope Nasa launched into space in 2021, strongly supports LHS 1140 b being an ocean world with a tentative nitrogen atmosphere.
However, further observations are needed to fully confirm this.
"Detecting an Earth-like atmosphere on a temperate planet is pushing Webb's capabilities to its limits; it's feasible; we just need lots of observing time,' René Doyon, of the International Research & Exchanges Board (iREx) who studied the data, said in a statement last year.
'The current hint of a nitrogen-rich atmosphere begs for confirmation with more data.
'We need at least one more year of observations to confirm that LHS 1140 b has an atmosphere, and likely two or three more to detect carbon dioxide."
4
JWST data further suggests the exoplanet's mass might be made of between 10 and 20 per cent liquid water
Credit: NASA
LHS 1140 b is a super Earth exoplanet that lies in the so-called 'Goldilocks zone' of its nearest star.
This is the area around a star where it's neither too hot nor too cold for a world to host liquid water.
When the data was pinged back to Earth - a process that miraculously only takes about five seconds - it was the 'first time [scientists] have ever seen a hint of an atmosphere on a habitable zone rocky or ice-rich exoplanet," according to Ryan MacDonald, a Nasa Sagan Fellow in the University of Michigan's Department of Astronomy, who helped analyse LHS 1140 b's atmosphere.
JWST data further suggests the exoplanet's mass might be made of between 10 and 20 per cent liquid water.
While that could mean the planet looks like one big snowball - the side facing the sun could have a warm liquid ocean, making it look like an eyeball.
Charles Cadieux, a doctoral student at the Université de Montréal and lead author of a paper on the discovery, said at the time: "Of all currently known temperate exoplanets, LHS 1140 b could well be our best bet to one day indirectly confirm liquid water on the surface of an alien world beyond our solar system.
"This would be a major milestone in the search for potentially habitable exoplanets."
4
And although this world is relatively close to our own in cosmic terms, it would still take 41 years to get there - while travelling at the speed of light
Credit: Getty
All you need to know about planets in our solar system
Our solar system is made up of nine planets with Earth the third closest to the Sun. But each planet has its own quirks, so find out more about them all... How old is Earth? Plus other facts on our planet
How many moons does Mercury have?
What colour is Venus?
How far away is Mars to Earth? And other facts on the red planet
How big is Jupiter?
How many moons does Saturn have?
Does Uranus have rings?
How many moons does Neptune have?
How big is Pluto?
How hot is the Sun?
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
NBC News
3 hours ago
- NBC News
These cosmic monsters are creating the biggest explosions since the big bang
The vast emptiness of space is growing emptier one star at a time. That's because 80 billion lightyears from Earth, three cosmic beasts are devouring stars ten times the size of the sun. In a new study by the University of Hawaii, among others, astronomers scouring through NASA and European Space Agency's data said they had discovered three supermassive black holes. Those behemoths feast on stars of such a size that make the one at the center of the solar system look like a light snack. The explosions those scientists have recorded, which happened when those black holes shredded and sucked up the fabric of those stars, are the largest since the big bang that created the universe. 'What I think is so exciting about this work is that we're pushing the upper bounds of what we understand to be the most energetic environments of the universe,' Anna Payne, a staff scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and a co-author of the study, said in the NASA article. Black holes are astronomical objects invisible to the human eye. They have a gravitational pull so strong that they swallow everything, including light. A supermassive black hole is the biggest of all black holes, sitting at the center of galaxies like the one at the heart of the Milky Way slowly sucking planets and all other matter toward it. When a star gets trapped in the pull of a supermassive black hole, it can disintegrate with a spectacular explosion in a cosmic event that scientists in a new study published this week in the journal Science Advances call 'extreme nuclear transient.' 'These events are the only way we can have a spotlight that we can shine on otherwise inactive massive black holes,' University of Hawaii graduate student Jason Hinkle said in a separate NASA article. Hinkle is the lead author of the new study that describes for the first time two such events that took place over the past decade. Two of the three supermassive black holes were detected in 2016 and 2018 by an ESA mission and are documented for the first time in the study. The third, nicknamed 'Barbie' because of its catalog identifier ZTF20abrbeie, was identified in 2020 by a Caltech observatory in California and subsequently documented in 2023. The blasts are so powerful that the only cosmic event larger in magnitude has been the big bang that sparked the dawn of the universe. Unlike in other stellar explosions, though, the way X-ray, optical light and ultraviolet rays dimmed and brightened in these incidents made it clear this event was a 'black hole ripping a star apart,' the NASA article said. NASA says black holes actually brighten during these cosmic events and that brightness lasts for several months. That brightness has given scientists a new way to find more black holes in the early distant universe. When astronomers peer into space, they are looking back in time because the further away they look, the older the light is reaching them — the light reaching Earth from the sun, for example, is eight minutes old. 'We can take these three objects as a blueprint to know what to look for in the future,' Payne said.
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Daily Mail
The influential Trump advisor who triggered the president's spectacular split with Elon Musk
President Donald Trump 's surprise decision to change Elon Musk 's preferred pick to lead NASA may have done more to fuel the historic blowup between the two men than previously known. The president canceled his nomination of Jared Isaacman as NASA's administrator after Musk officially left the White House on Friday. Isaacman, a billionaire, pilot, and astronaut, was close with Musk and even flew to space with Musk's Dragon program on Operation Polaris Dawn in 2024. But he had a history of donating funds to Democrats, including recent Democratic candidates who ran against GOP senators Tim Sheehy of Montana and Bernie Moreno of Ohio in 2024. Despite his donations, Isaacman was approved by the Senate committee in April and was expected to get confirmed this week in the Senate. But Trump's advisor Sergio Gor, in charge of managing the White House personnel office, reportedly delivered Trump a list of Isaacman's donations to Democrats according to reporting from Axios. Gor did not appreciate Musk's involvement in personnel matters, the report noted, as they had a tense relationship. 'This was Sergio's out-the-door 'f**k you' to Musk,' one White House official said. Trump and Musk spoke about Issacson's record prior to their press conference last Friday. Despite their conversation, Trump pulled Issacson's nomination on Saturday. 'After a thorough review of prior associations, I am hereby withdrawing the nomination of Jared Isaacman to head NASA,' Trump wrote on his Truth Social site. Musk responded to the news with disappointment 'It is rare to find someone so competent and good-hearted,' Musk wrote of Isaacman on X. The president mused Thursday that Musk's personal attacks might have been trigged by his decision. 'I know that disturbed him He wanted and rightfully recommended somebody that I guess he knew very well. I'm sure he respected him, to run NASA. But I didn't think it was appropriate. He happened to be a Democrat, like totally Democrat,' Trump said, adding that the administration had the right to nominate a Republican to the position.
BBC News
4 hours ago
- BBC News
ASKAP J1832: Scientists discovers mysterious pulsating star in space
Scientists say they've spotted a mysterious object in space behaving in a very strange star, which has been named ASKAP J1832, is acting unlike anything seen before, according to Nasa around 15,000 light years from Earth, it is pulsing every 44 even more strange is that it is doing it with both radio waves and X-rays. What did scientists find? A team of astronomers looked at data from Nasa's space-based Chandra X-ray Observatory and the Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Australia to study the discovered object, which has been called ASKAP found that the star belongs to a class of objects called "long period radio transients" - that means it sends out radio waves of different levels over tens of minutes - in this case every 44 they also found that it is also sending X-rays every 44 minutes to Nasa, this combination of factors is "unlike anything astronomers have seen in the Milky Way galaxy."Experts are trying to work out what type of object ASKAP J1832, however they think it might be one of two could be a magnetar - which is a neutron star with an extremely strong magnetic field, with an age of more than half a million it could also be possibly an unusual white dwarf star which has a companion star.
