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Concept
Ocean world
Summary
An ocean world, ocean planet, panthalassic planet, maritime world, water world or aquaplanet, is a type of planet that contains a substantial amount of water in the form of oceans, as part of its hydrosphere, either beneath the surface, as subsurface oceans, or on the surface, potentially submerging all dry land. The term ocean world is also used sometimes for astronomical bodies with an ocean composed of a different fluid or thalassogen, such as lava (the case of Io), ammonia (in a eutectic mixture with water, as is likely the case of Titan's inner ocean) or hydrocarbons (like on Titan's surface, which could be the most abundant kind of exosea). The study of extraterrestrial oceans is referred to as planetary oceanography.
Earth is the only astronomical object known to presently have bodies of liquid water on its surface, although several exoplanets have been found with the right conditions to support liquid water. There are also considerable amounts of subsurface water found on Earth, mostly in the form of aquifers. For exoplanets, current technology cannot directly observe liquid surface water, so atmospheric water vapor may be used as a proxy. The characteristics of ocean worlds provide clues to their history and the formation and evolution of the Solar System as a whole. Of additional interest is their potential to originate and host life.
In June 2020, NASA scientists reported that it is likely that exoplanets with oceans are common in the Milky Way galaxy, based on mathematical modeling studies.
Ocean worlds are of extreme interest to astrobiologists for their potential to develop life and sustain biological activity over geological timescales. Major moons and dwarf planets in the Solar System thought to harbor subsurface oceans are of substantial interest because they can realistically be reached and studied by space probes, in contrast to exoplanets, which are tens if not hundreds or thousands of light-years away, far beyond the reach of current human technology.
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