Analysis finds evidence for many exoplanets made of water and rock around small stars

tech.hindustantimes.com:

A new study suggests that many more planets may have large amounts of water than previously thought--as much as half water and half rock. The catch? All that water is probably embedded in the rock, rather than flowing as oceans or rivers on the surface.

A new study suggests that many more planets may have large amounts of water than previously thought -- as much as half water and half rock. The catch? All that water is probably embedded in the rock, rather than flowing as oceans or rivers on the surface.

"It was a surprise to see evidence for so many water worlds orbiting the most common type of star in the galaxy," said Rafael Luque, first author on the new paper and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago. "It has enormous consequences for the search for habitable planets."

Thanks to better telescope instruments, scientists are finding signs of more and more planets in distant solar systems. A larger sample size helps scientists identify demographic patterns -- similar to how looking at the population of an entire town can reveal trends that are hard to see at an individual level.

Luque, along with co-author Enric Palle of the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands and the University of La Laguna, decided to take a population-level look at a group of planets that are seen around a type of star called an M-dwarf. These stars are the most common stars we see around us in the galaxy, and scientists have catalogued dozens of planets around them so far.

But because stars are so much brighter than their planets, we cannot see the actual planets themselves. Instead, scientists detect faint signs of the planets' effects on their stars -- the shadow created when a planet crosses in front of its