Re:NASA finds a large amount of water in an exoplanet's atmo...
by semaphoreP on Thursday March 01, 2018 @09:16PM
(#16498403)
It's hard to measure absolute water abundances (it requires a lot of assumptions and extrapolating). This is a relative comparison of atmospheric water. We don't have relative water abundances for a lot of planets, so it's on the higher end, but we don't really know (maybe some other planets' water are hidden behind clouds).
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:NASA finds a large amount of water in an exoplanet's atmo...
by ianai on Thursday March 01, 2018 @10:24PM
(#16498731)
That makes me think it’s a pretty substantive amount of water. If we’re getting 3x the spike we see for a planet in our own solar system in a planet lys away then actual content should be much more (due to signal/noise? Just guessing though)
Re:NASA finds a large amount of water in an exoplanet's atmo...
by semaphoreP on Friday March 02, 2018 @12:25AM
(#16499285)
It's not the absolute value of the signal. What they're measuring the amount of water compared to hydrogen.