Yeah, Got That Water

After surveying 19 exoplanets, a University of Cambridge-led research team found 14 had water vapor in their atmospheres more than theyd expected. The amount of water vapor, meanwhile? Less than theyd anticipated. Yet: These new insights could go a long way toward narrowing our hunt for extraterrestrial life.

Its important to know about even the most remote presence of water elsewhere [given] that water is a key ingredient to our notion of habitability on Earth, project leader Nikku Madhusudhan said in a press release,

For their survey results of which were published on Wednesday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters the researchers gathered spectroscopic data on the 19 exoplanets using numerous telescopes, including Hubble and Chiles Very Large Telescope.

Using that data, they were able to estimate amounts of various chemicals in the exoplanets atmospheres and hope to do the same for additional exoplanets in the future.

We look forward to increasing the size of our planet sample in future studies, Madhusudhan said. Inevitably, we expect to find outliers to the current trends as well as measurements of other chemicals.

READ MORE: Water common yet scarce in exoplanets [University of Cambridge]

More on exoplanets: Exoplanet Water Worlds Could Hold Unfathomably Deep Alien Oceans

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Survey Finds That Water Is Common Around Exoplanets - Futurism