Volatile-rich Earth-Mass Planets in the Habitable Zone

By M. Kuchner. 2003

159 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A small planet is not necessarily a terrestrial planet. Planets that form beyond the snow line with too little mass to seed rapid gas accretion (≲10 M⊕) should be rich in volatile ices like H2O and NH3. Some of these planets should migrate inward by interacting with a circumstellar disk or with other planets. Such objects can retain their volatiles for billions of years or longer at ~1 AU as their thick steam atmospheres undergo slow hydrodynamic escape. These objects could appear in future surveys for extrasolar Earth analogs.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ee9edd4fe51dd058d0e4368e0eb28d35aa0ff169

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Citations in the corpus

The habitability of Proxima Centauri b. I. Irradiation, rotation and volatile inventory from formation to the present (2016, background): “Rather, they could be extremely water-rich (Kuchner 2003; Léger et al. 2004).”
Planetary Radii across Five Orders of Magnitude in Mass and Stellar Insolation: Application to Transits (2006, background): “Ice-rich terrestrial planets close to their parent stars could have steam atmospheres (Kuchner 2003) which, depending on the atmospheric scale height, could lead to larger radii at a given mass for these objects.”
FORMATION AND STRUCTURE OF LOW-DENSITY EXO-NEPTUNES (2011, background): “Although we have not considered them in detail here, planets may also form with high molecular weight envelopes, for instance, after having accreted large amounts of ices beyond the snow line (e.g., Kuchner 2003; Léger et al. 2004).”
Exoplanet Atmospheres: Physical Processes (2010, background): “Water planets, akin to scaled up versions of Jupiterʼs icy moons, could have up to 50 percent water by mass, with concomitant massive steam atmospheres (Kuchner 2003; Leger et al. 2004; Rogers and Seager 2009).”
Water loss from terrestrial planets orbiting ultracool dwarfs: implications for the planets of TRAPPIST-1 (2016, background): “Both on the observational and theoretical side, it has been shown that planets could even have a large portion of their bulk made out of water (Ocean planets, hypothesized by Kuchner 2003; Léger et al. 2004; Ogihara & Ida 2009).”
HOW TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN CLOUDY MINI-NEPTUNES AND WATER/VOLATILE-DOMINATED SUPER-EARTHS (2013, background): “…that have accreted and maintained a thick H2/He envelope atop an ice and rock core or, alternatively, by a new class of “water worlds” which contain a large fraction of water or ices in their interior and are surrounded by a dense water vapor atmosphere (Kuchner (2003) and Léger et al. (2004)).”
A FRAMEWORK FOR QUANTIFYING THE DEGENERACIES OF EXOPLANET INTERIOR COMPOSITIONS (2009, background): “Water-dominated “ocean” planets could have a vapor atmosphere or even a superfluid surface layer (e.g., Kuchner 2003; Léger et al. 2004; Selsis et al. 2007a).”
Habitable planets around the star Gliese 581 (2007, background): “In addition, the water content of terrestrial planets is thought to be highly variable (Raymond et al. 2007) and could be as high as 50% in mass for migrating planets initially formed beyond the snow line (Kuchner 2003; Léger et al. 2004; Selsis et al. 2007).”
How to Characterize Habitable Worlds and Signs of Life (2017, background): “…Earth- and super-Earth-sized planets completely engulfed by a water envelope has long fascinated scientists and the general public alike (see, e.g., Kuchner 2003, Leger et al. 2004, Selsis et al. 2007, Zeng & Sasselov 2013) and exoplanet discoveries show densities suggesting a potentially large…”
THE MASS OF Kepler-93b AND THE COMPOSITION OF TERRESTRIAL PLANETS (2014, background): “…formation predict that planets intermediate in size between Earth and Neptune could be gaseous “mini-Neptunes,” water worlds, or rocky “Super-Earths” (Kuchner 2003; Léger et al. 2004; Valencia et al. 2006; Seager et al. 2007; Fortney et al. 2007; Rogers et al. 2011; Lopez et al. 2012; Zeng &…”
A new family of planets? Ocean-Planets (2003, background): “If they are as resistant, with respect to the evaporation and photolysis of their atmospheres as some models predict (Kuchner, 2003) COROT (launch scheduled in 2006) will detect the hottest ones.”
Mass-Radius Relationships for Solid Exoplanets (2007, background): “…by Léger et al. (2004) focused on water planets, and provided a detailed model of the interior and atmosphere of a 6 M⊕ planet with an interior composition of: 3 M⊕ of water, 2 M⊕ of a silicate mantle and 1 M⊕ iron and nickel core (see also Kuchner (2003) for a description of a water planet.)”
THREE POSSIBLE ORIGINS FOR THE GAS LAYER ON GJ 1214b (2009, methodology): “Kuchner (2003) and Léger et al. (2004) first proposed that waterrich planets might be prevalent on orbits accessible to transit and radial velocity detections, although no such planets have been conclusively discovered so far.”
Ocean Planet or Thick Atmosphere: On the Mass-Radius Relationship for Solid Exoplanets with Massive Atmospheres (2007, background): “Much attention has been given to “ocean planets” or “water worlds”, planets composed mostly of solid water (Kuchner 2003; Léger et al. 2004).”