Distant planet formed 150 million years ago found to have water

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An exoplanet 40 light years away has a swirling dust storm occurring on its surface composed of methane, carbon dioxide and water.

The planet, which orbits two stars around 235.2 trillion miles away in the direction of the constellation Corvus, was analyzed by a team of astronomers led by Brittany Miles of the University of Arizona using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The team found giant gritty dust storms made from silicate clouds swirling on the gas giant's surface, as well as water, methane, and carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide, describing the findings in a paper due to be published in the journal The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

According to NASA, this is the largest number of molecules ever identified all at once on a planet outside our solar system.

Stock image of a gas giant exoplanet. An exoplanet named VHS 1256 b has been discovered to have dust storms of silicate, CO2, water and methane in its atmosphere. iStock / Getty Images Plus

The planet itself, named VHS 1256 b, was first detected in 2015 by the Vista telescope in Chile, and is a "super Jupiter" gas giant, around 12 to 18 times the size of our own Jupiter. Its days are 22 hours long, with its clouds of silicate—a compound of silicon and oxygen—rising and mixing throughout the day as the temperature rises and falls, heating up to around 1,500 degrees F.

"The finer silicate grains in its atmosphere may be more like tiny particles in smoke," said co-author Beth Biller of Scotland's University of Edinburgh in a NASA statement. "The larger grains might be more like very hot, very small sand particles."

VHS 1256 b takes around 10,000 years to orbit its two parent stars, and is relatively young, having only formed 150 million years ago. For comparison, the Earth formed around 4.5 billion years ago, with Jupiter forming around 4.6 billion years ago.

Instruments aboard the James Webb Space Telescope known as spectrographs, one on its Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) and another on its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), observed planet VHS 1256 b. The resulting spectrum shows signatures of... Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted STScI); Science: Brittany Miles University of Arizona), Sasha Hinkley University of Exeter, Beth Biller (University of Edinburgh, Andrew Skemer (University of California, Santa Cruz

This is not the first time that water has been detected in the atmospheres of exoplanets, as many have been detected to have water vapor in their chemical makeup, several of which exist in the habitable zone of their solar systems. In fact, more than a quarter of known exoplanets (of which there are now over 5,000) may have liquid water present on their surfaces.

The chemical makeup of planets many millions of miles away can be measured as they pass in front of their stars, with the wavelengths of light that shine through their atmosphere giving astronomers clues as to what gasses they have floating in their atmosphere.

"If a planet transits, then some of the starlight gets filtered through the atmosphere of the planet as the planet passes in front, the planet blocks part of the light, but this little fraction of the light that also goes through the atmosphere interacts with it," Néstor Espinoza, an astrophysicist and astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, previously told Newsweek. "So some of that information is stored into that light."

However, due to the distance this planet orbits from its stars—four times further out than Pluto orbits our sun—it was able to be directly observed.

NASA's search for exoplanets with the right ingredients for life has been expedited by the James Webb Space Telescope, which allows scientists much greater detail when analyzing the chemicals present in the atmospheres of planets many light years away. VHS 1256 b was fully analyzed as part of Webb's Early Release Science program.

However, just because water, carbon dioxide and methane are present in an atmosphere, this doesn't mean that the planet has life.

"There's no strong consensus on exactly what will claim or scream to you that that's life," Espinoza said. "You don't only need one molecule to be detected, you need several molecules that you can detect.

VHS 1256 b in particular isn't much of a candidate for life, as it resembles a massive Jupiter more than our lush blue and green home planet.

The James Webb Space Telescope has enabled scientists to get closer than ever to detecting life, however.

"Now in terms of the prospects of the James Webb Space Telescope detecting life, I don't think it's very likely, to be very honest. And I'm a good scientist, I'm putting the 'not very likely' warning. Because we don't know what we're going to be seeing in these data. But it will be good to keep in mind that the answer, I think, that the James Webb Space Telescope can really answer is: 'Does this planet have an atmosphere at all or not?' That's the very big question. That is one that is key. And it's like a small step for our students, but a huge step for mankind," he said.

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about exoplanets? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.

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