An observational signature of evolved oceans on extra-solar terrestrial planets

Abstract

The increase in luminosity with time of a main sequence star eventually can lead to substantial evaporation of the oceans on an orbiting terrestrial planet. Subsequently, the gas phase water in the planet's upper atmosphere can be photodissociated by stellar ultraviolet and the resulting atomic hydrogen then may be lost in a wind. This gaseous envelope may pass in front of the host star and produce tansient, detectable ultraviolet absorption in the Lyman lines in systems older than 1 Gyr.

10 pages, 2 figures, accepted by ApJ Letters

References in corpus (1)

• Detection of oxygen and carbon in the hydrodynamically escaping atmosphere of the extrasolar planet HD209458b

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