From The Department of Earth Sciences And The Institute of Astronomy At The University of Cambridge (UK): “Scientists have new tool to estimate how much water might be hidden beneath a planet’s surface”
From The Department of Earth Sciences
And
at
The University of Cambridge (UK)
3.15.23
Erin Martin-Jones
cmm201@cam.ac.uk
Water worlds. Credit: NASA.
In the search for life elsewhere in the Universe, scientists have traditionally looked for planets with liquid water at their surface. But, rather than flowing as oceans and rivers, much of a planet’s water can be locked in rocks deep within its interior.
Scientists from the University of Cambridge now have a way to estimate how much water a rocky planet can store in its subterranean reservoirs. It is thought that this water, which is locked into the structure of minerals deep down, might help a planet recover from its initial fiery birth.
The researchers developed a model that can predict the proportion of water-rich minerals inside a planet. These minerals act like a sponge, soaking up water which can later return to the surface and replenish oceans. Their results could help us understand how planets can become habitable following intense heat and radiation during their early years.
Planets orbiting M-type red dwarf stars — the most common star in the galaxy — are thought to be one of the best places to look for alien life. But these stars have particularly tempestuous adolescent years — releasing intense bursts of radiation that blast nearby planets and bake off their surface water.
Our Sun’s adolescent phase was relatively short, but red dwarf stars spend much longer in this angsty transitional period. As a result, the planets under their wing suffer a runaway greenhouse effect where their climate is thrown into chaos.
“We wanted to investigate whether these planets, after such a tumultuous upbringing, could rehabilitate themselves and go on to host surface water,” said lead author of the study, Claire Guimond, a PhD student in Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences.
The new research, published in the MNRAS [below], shows that interior water could be a viable way to replenish liquid surface water once a planet’s host star has matured and dimmed. This water would likely have been brought up by volcanoes and gradually released as steam into the atmosphere, together with other life-giving elements.
Their new model allows them to calculate a planet’s interior water capacity based on its size and the chemistry of its host star. “The model gives us an upper limit on how much water a planet could carry at depth, based on these minerals and their ability to take water into their structure,” said Guimond.
The researchers found that the size of a planet plays a key role in deciding how much water it can hold. That’s because a planet’s size determines the proportion of water-carrying minerals it is made of.
Most of a planet’s interior water is contained within a rocky layer known as the upper mantle — which lies directly below the crust. Here, pressure and temperature conditions are just right for the formation of green-blue minerals called wadsleyite and ringwoodite that can soak up water. This rocky layer is also within reach of volcanoes, which could bring water back to the surface through eruptions.
The new research showed that larger planets — around two to three times bigger than Earth — typically have drier rocky mantles because the water-rich upper mantle makes up a smaller proportion of their total mass.
The results could provide scientists with guidelines to aid their search for exoplanets that might host life, “This could help refine our triaging of which planets to study first,” said Oliver Shorttle, who is jointly affiliated with Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences and Institute of Astronomy. “When we’re looking for the planets that can best hold water you probably do not want one significantly more massive or wildly smaller than Earth.”
The findings could also add to our understanding of how planets, including those closer to home like Venus, can transition from barren hellscapes to a blue marble. Temperatures on the surface of Venus, which is of a similar size and bulk composition to Earth, hover around 450oC and its atmosphere is heavy with carbon dioxide and nitrogen. It remains an open question whether Venus hosted liquid water at its surface 4 billion years ago. “If that’s the case, then Venus must have found a way to cool itself and regain surface water after being born around a fiery sun,” said Shorttle, “It’s possible that it tapped into its interior water in order to do this.”
See the full article here .
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The Department of Earth Sciences offers world-leading education and carries out innovative and ground-breaking research, using excellent facilities in a dynamic, welcoming and inclusive environment.
The department’s history can be traced back to 1731 when the 1st Woodwardian Professor of Geology was appointed, in accordance with the bequest of John Woodward. The present Department of Earth Sciences was formed by an amalgamation of the Department of Geology, Department of Geodesy and Geophysics and the Department of Mineralogy and Petrology in 1980.
The main location of the department is at the Downing Site, Downing St. The Bullard Laboratories, located in West Cambridge on Madingley Rd is a satellite department of the main building. The department incorporates the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences and the Godwin Laboratory.
The department is the home of the Sedgwick Club, which was founded in memory of Adam Sedgwick in 1880, and is the oldest student run geological society in the world.
The Institute of Astronomy is part of the Faculty of Physics and Chemistry within the School of the Physical Sciences of The University of Cambridge (UK).
The Institute of Astronomy came into being in 1972 by the amalgamation of three institutions which had developed on the site. These were the Cambridge University Observatory which was established in 1823, the Solar Physics Observatory (1912) and the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy (1967).
The Institute of Astronomy is a department of the University of Cambridge and is engaged in teaching and research in the fields of theoretical and observational Astronomy. A wide class of theoretical problems are studied, ranging from models of quasars and of the evolution of the universe, through theories of the formation and evolution of galaxies and stars, X-ray sources and black holes.
Much observational work centres around the use by staff of large telescopes abroad and in space to study quasars, galaxies and the chemical constitution of stars. A programme on the velocities of stars is conducted using the 36-inch telescope in Cambridge. Instrumentation development is also an important area of activity, involving charge coupled devices and detector arrays for rapid recording of very faint light and the design and construction of novel spectrographs.
The Institute comprises about 88 postdoctoral staff, 45 graduate students and 26 support staff. There are close links with the Cavendish Astrophysics Group (formerly the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory) as well as with the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, all of which are conducting complementary research programmes here in Cambridge.
The University of Cambridge (UK) [legally The Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Cambridge] is a collegiate public research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world’s fourth-oldest surviving university. It grew out of an association of scholars who left the University of Oxford(UK) after a dispute with townsfolk. The two ancient universities share many common features and are often jointly referred to as “Oxbridge”.
Cambridge is formed from a variety of institutions which include 31 semi-autonomous constituent colleges and over 150 academic departments, faculties and other institutions organised into six schools. All the colleges are self-governing institutions within the university, each controlling its own membership and with its own internal structure and activities. All students are members of a college. Cambridge does not have a main campus and its colleges and central facilities are scattered throughout the city. Undergraduate teaching at Cambridge is organised around weekly small-group supervisions in the colleges – a feature unique to the Oxbridge system. These are complemented by classes, lectures, seminars, laboratory work and occasionally further supervisions provided by the central university faculties and departments. Postgraduate teaching is provided predominantly centrally.
Cambridge University Press a department of the university is the oldest university press in the world and currently the second largest university press in the world. Cambridge Assessment also a department of the university is one of the world’s leading examining bodies and provides assessment to over eight million learners globally every year. The university also operates eight cultural and scientific museums, including the Fitzwilliam Museum, as well as a botanic garden. Cambridge’s libraries – of which there are 116 – hold a total of around 16 million books, around nine million of which are in Cambridge University Library, a legal deposit library. The university is home to – but independent of – the Cambridge Union – the world’s oldest debating society. The university is closely linked to the development of the high-tech business cluster known as “Silicon Fe”. It is the central member of Cambridge University Health Partners, an academic health science centre based around the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
By both endowment size and consolidated assets Cambridge is the wealthiest university in the United Kingdom. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2019, the central university – excluding colleges – had a total income of £2.192 billion of which £592.4 million was from research grants and contracts. At the end of the same financial year the central university and colleges together possessed a combined endowment of over £7.1 billion and overall consolidated net assets (excluding “immaterial” historical assets) of over £12.5 billion. It is a member of numerous associations and forms part of the ‘golden triangle’ of English universities.
Cambridge has educated many notable alumni including eminent mathematicians; scientists; politicians; lawyers; philosophers; writers; actors; monarchs and other heads of state. As of October 2020 121 Nobel laureates; 11 Fields Medalists; 7 Turing Award winners; and 14 British prime ministers have been affiliated with Cambridge as students; alumni; faculty or research staff. University alumni have won 194 Olympic medals.
History
By the late 12th century the Cambridge area already had a scholarly and ecclesiastical reputation due to monks from the nearby bishopric church of Ely. However it was an incident at Oxford which is most likely to have led to the establishment of the university: three Oxford scholars were hanged by the town authorities for the death of a woman without consulting the ecclesiastical authorities who would normally take precedence (and pardon the scholars) in such a case; but were at that time in conflict with King John. Fearing more violence from the townsfolk scholars from the University of Oxford started to move away to cities such as Paris; Reading; and Cambridge. Subsequently enough scholars remained in Cambridge to form the nucleus of a new university when it had become safe enough for academia to resume at Oxford. In order to claim precedence it is common for Cambridge to trace its founding to the 1231 charter from Henry III granting it the right to discipline its own members (ius non-trahi extra) and an exemption from some taxes; Oxford was not granted similar rights until 1248.
A bull in 1233 from Pope Gregory IX gave graduates from Cambridge the right to teach “everywhere in Christendom”. After Cambridge was described as a studium generale in a letter from Pope Nicholas IV in 1290 and confirmed as such in a bull by Pope John XXII in 1318 it became common for researchers from other European medieval universities to visit Cambridge to study or to give lecture courses.
Foundation of the colleges
The colleges at the University of Cambridge were originally an incidental feature of the system. No college is as old as the university itself. The colleges were endowed fellowships of scholars. There were also institutions without endowments called hostels. The hostels were gradually absorbed by the colleges over the centuries; but they have left some traces, such as the name of Garret Hostel Lane.
Hugh Balsham, Bishop of Ely, founded Peterhouse – Cambridge’s first college in 1284. Many colleges were founded during the 14th and 15th centuries but colleges continued to be established until modern times. There was a gap of 204 years between the founding of Sidney Sussex in 1596 and that of Downing in 1800. The most recently established college is Robinson built in the late 1970s. However Homerton College only achieved full university college status in March 2010 making it the newest full college (it was previously an “Approved Society” affiliated with the university).
In medieval times many colleges were founded so that their members would pray for the souls of the founders and were often associated with chapels or abbeys. The colleges’ focus changed in 1536 with the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Henry VIII ordered the university to disband its Faculty of Canon Law and to stop teaching “scholastic philosophy”. In response, colleges changed their curricula away from canon law and towards the classics; the Bible; and mathematics.
Nearly a century later the university was at the centre of a Protestant schism. Many nobles, intellectuals and even commoners saw the ways of the Church of England as too similar to the Catholic Church and felt that it was used by the Crown to usurp the rightful powers of the counties. East Anglia was the centre of what became the Puritan movement. In Cambridge the movement was particularly strong at Emmanuel; St Catharine’s Hall; Sidney Sussex; and Christ’s College. They produced many “non-conformist” graduates who, greatly influenced by social position or preaching left for New England and especially the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the Great Migration decade of the 1630s. Oliver Cromwell, Parliamentary commander during the English Civil War and head of the English Commonwealth (1649–1660), attended Sidney Sussex.
Modern period
After the Cambridge University Act formalised the organisational structure of the university the study of many new subjects was introduced e.g. theology, history and modern languages. Resources necessary for new courses in the arts architecture and archaeology were donated by Viscount Fitzwilliam of Trinity College who also founded the Fitzwilliam Museum. In 1847 Prince Albert was elected Chancellor of the University of Cambridge after a close contest with the Earl of Powis. Albert used his position as Chancellor to campaign successfully for reformed and more modern university curricula, expanding the subjects taught beyond the traditional mathematics and classics to include modern history and the natural sciences. Between 1896 and 1902 Downing College sold part of its land to build the Downing Site with new scientific laboratories for anatomy, genetics, and Earth sciences. During the same period the New Museums Site was erected including the Cavendish Laboratory which has since moved to the West Cambridge Site and other departments for chemistry and medicine.
The University of Cambridge began to award PhD degrees in the first third of the 20th century. The first Cambridge PhD in mathematics was awarded in 1924.
In the First World War 13,878 members of the university served and 2,470 were killed. Teaching and the fees it earned came almost to a stop and severe financial difficulties followed. As a consequence the university first received systematic state support in 1919 and a Royal Commission appointed in 1920 recommended that the university (but not the colleges) should receive an annual grant. Following the Second World War the university saw a rapid expansion of student numbers and available places; this was partly due to the success and popularity gained by many Cambridge scientists.
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