Super-Earth with Water-rich Atmosphere Identified Around Host Star

[Ichingcarpenter]

A group of Japanese astronomers have recently identified what they consider to be a super-Earth, possessing a water-rich atmosphere, orbiting its host star. The train of thought seems to be, if scientists can determine the atmospheric composition of these exoplanets, their mysterious origins and evolution might be deduced within the future.

Super-Earth Exoplanets
Super-Earth’s are considered a relatively new type of exoplanet (a planet that orbits a star outside of this Solar System). The term super-Earth actually refers to the mass of the planet, which is typically much greater than that of Earth, but bears little reflection of the atmospheric conditions of the planet.

A super-Earth’s mass and radius is typically bigger than Earth, but no larger than that of our Solar System’s sizable ice planets, Neptune and Uranus. The actual atmosphere of this exoplanet has, until now, has remained shrouded in mystery.

The very first super-Earths were discovered during 1992 around a rotating neutron star, situated a thousand light years from our Sun, by Aleksander Wolszczan and Dale Frail.

The Study
During the latest study, researchers attempted to .............



http://guardianlv.com/2013/09/super-earth-with-water-rich-atmosphere-identified-around-host-star/


Does that mean the beings on that planet would be able to leap tall buildings on earth in a single bound?

[TheMadMonk]

1. No more than we would be able to do so on Mars.

And by the time such a creature got to our size, there's a there's a fair chance any such hypothetical beings might not be able to jump at all, or would only do so under great threat. Just like elephants aren't in the habit of leaping into their dry moats at zoos.

[Ichingcarpenter]

2. Ah but my hypothetical beings

lived and developed in water on this water planet so gravity did not effect them

http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/38344/super-earth-found-with-super-humans/


See?........LOL

[TheMadMonk]

3. And here such would be akin to a "walrus" if compact.

Ever noticed that sea creatures tend to show a lot less morphic variability than land animals?

None of our sea creatures perform very well above the waves, there's no great reason to expect water creatures from another planet to do any better.

[HereSince1628]

4. True, sea creatures rely upon buoancy and 'lift' as much as skeltal support to counteract gravity

Generally they are not at all well suited to moving away from the buoyant support of their fluid environs.

Some quite lovely, well adapated animals are little more than a pile of mushy protoplasm when caste upon the shore.

[GaYellowDawg]

5. What makes you say that?

I wouldn't see any reason why evolution on a planet with a greater gravitational acceleration wouldn't result in organisms that could run and jump just as we do, if selection necessitated it.

[TheMadMonk]

6. Physics. The reason elephant's don't leap like gazelles here on Earth. /nt

[GaYellowDawg]

7. I think there are some things you fail to take into account. And "physics" is a complete misnomer.

The main conception that you're working under is that evolution will fall under the same constraints on a different world. That is not necessarily so. With a mammalian model it is apparently either unnecessary or difficult (or some combination of the two) for a high-mass organism to be able to jump. However, there are no guarantees that life on another planet will use any of the biological/molecular components that life on Earth does. No guarantees that there will be any common themes. With that in mind, you cannot legitimately state with any degree of certainty anything about the constraints of evolution on a different planet.

Further, you also have no guarantees that over millions of years, mammals could not develop compensatory structures at the molecular, cellular, tissue, and organ levels that would allow organisms the size of elephants to leap like gazelles, either on Earth, or in a higher gravity environment. Frankly, with the correct selective pressures, it would not only be possible, but probable.

[Posteritatis]

8. The square-cube law doesn't go away on other planets. (nt)

[GaYellowDawg]

9. Yes, I understand that.

The original argument was that organisms our size on a different planet would not be able to jump. My argument is that organisms that have been under that gravitational constant for billions of years might very well have evolved mechanisms that would allow them to do so, and one could not legitimately dismiss that as a possibility because of the constraints of our own evolution. When you look at the extreme diversity displayed by eukaryotes both now and in the fossil record on our own planet, I think that it's shortsighted to assume that, on another planet, natural selection couldn't drive the evolution of an organism that could jump in gravity several times ours.