WISE 0855 is strikingly similar to Jupiter.
By Rakesh Agrawal
Water is the elixir of life and life cannot be thought even without water. Little wonder, the scientists, and astronomers have been searching for water in space—within our solar system and outside—only recently astronomers have detected clouds of water outside our solar system as The Huffington Post reported.
This discovery of water outside of our solar system is the first discovery of its kind when they found a brown dwarf― a type of low-mass star ― called WISE 0855, 7.2 light years from Earth on. It’s described as the coldest known object outside of our solar system and “strikingly similar to Jupiter.”
“It’s extremely low temperature makes it the first object after Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn likely to host water clouds in its visible atmosphere,” researchers stated in their report that was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters back in May. NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) first detected WISE 0855 in 2014. And, the scientists continued their observations that spanned over 13 nights and about 14 hours, using Hawaii’s Gemini-North telescope and the Gemini Near Infrared Spectrograph to get a clear enough picture of its infrared spectrum.
This spectrum not only confirms, with “the best evidence,” that objects that cold would have water clouds but also provides new insight into this outer star as well as into Jupiter, Andrew Skemer, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, said in a press release.
In addition to abundant water vapor, Jupiter and WISE 0855 also share similar temperatures — WISE 0855 being around 250 Kelvin or -9 degrees Fahrenheit, and Jupiter at 130 Kelvin.
But, its atmosphere is less turbulent than that of Jupiter as it does not heavily absorb the toxic gas phosphine like Jupiter does and is five times more massive than Jupiter.
If this discovery proved to be true, one day, we may have the real aliens and just not in Hollywood science fiction!