NASA Claims Carbon Worlds May Be Waterless

A latest theoretical research claims that carbon-rich alien worlds, including 'the diamond planets,' lack the presence of water that is crucial to create life.

 According to a latest finding, which was presented at the American Astronomical Society Division of Planetary Sciences meeting held in Denver, the theoretical model of carbon-rich worlds highlight the fact that diamond planets lack water and are mainly composed of carbon in the form of graphite, diamond, iron and silicon carbide, definitely not life's best buddy.

Since our Sun is a not abundant in carbon, our planet Earth is made up of mostly silicates and not carbon. On the other hand, the stars that filled with more carbon are more likely to create planets with excess carbon and possibly, even diamond.

The research is based on data from computer models analysing the components of a carbon- based planetary system.  The study team determined that the planets rich in carbon lack the icy water reservoirs that are believed to create oceans on planets.

"The building blocks that went into making our oceans are the icy asteroids and comets," said Torrence Johnson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a press statement. "If we keep track of these building blocks, we find that planets around carbon-rich stars come up dry." 

Researchers believe that the presence of extra carbon in a developing star system would eventually lock-on to the oxygen and prevent the oxygen to combine with hydrogen and form water, which is a important factor to support life. Therefore even before life kick starts on such planets, it is being wiped- out.

"It's ironic that if carbon, the main element of life, becomes too abundant, it will steal away the oxygen that would have made water, the solvent essential to life as we know it," said Jonathan Lunine of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., a collaborator on the research. 

While conducting the studies on exoplanet, researchers want to know whether or not they are habitable. The researchers begin discovering such planets by first analyzing those that fall within the habitable zone- also called as the Goldilocks zone- around their parent stars where the warm temperatures allow the water to pool on the surface. With the help of NASA's Kepler mission astronomers have identified several such planets within the habitable zone.

The researchers wondered whether these planets that are found in habitable zone have sufficient water to wet surface. This mystery was solved by Johnson who used the planetary models based on the measurement of the Sun's carbon-oxygen ration.

The Discovery News explains that, "Our sun was formed by the gravitational collapse of a rich cloud of gas and dust that originated from older generations of stars that exploded as supernova or fizzled out of existence billions of years ago. It just so happens that the carbon-to-oxygen ratio from this stellar gas soup was just right for our sun to form silicate-rich rocky worlds like Earth (as opposed to carbon-rich worlds) with the perfect amount of water ice accumulating beyond the "snow line" of the solar system."

 After applying the planetary models to the carbon rich stars, researchers noticed that water disappeared. Johnson claims that there is no snow beyond the snow line.

Lunine concludes that, not all the rocky planets are created equally. Therefore the diamond planets that are the size of the Earth, if they exist, will remain a lifeless, ocean-less, barren world.

The findings were published in the Astrophysical Journal.