Exoplanets, Dust, and Who Sees Data First?

It's been a little over 10 years since scientists spotted Kepler-22 b. It was the first time we'd spotted a transiting exoplanet that's in its sun's habitable zone.

That may or may not mean that Kepler-22 b is habitable. The odds are good that the exoplanet is a water world: covered with an ocean far deeper than Earth's

Since then we've discovered quite a few water worlds. And, possibly because there's a 1995 action film called "Waterworld", they're often called ocean worlds.¹

This week I'll talk about two (probably) ocean worlds, Kepler-138 c and d; discovered in 2014, they're far to hot for life as we know it. But scientists recently published a new analysis of those two worlds. And that gave me something to talk about.

So did a proposed change in when taxpayer-funded research projects release data. It's good news or bad news, depending on who's talking. That's this week's first item.

I'll also look at a very young planetary system's dust disk, the odds for life on ocean planets, and assorted other topics:

• Sharing Information, and a Newfangled Idea
  • Access to Information
  • 'We've Never Done It This Way Before'
• AU Microscopii's Dusty Disk: A Close Look, in Infrared
  • A Zodiacal Digression
  • A Dust Disk by Starlight: Polarized Light, Oscillations and Weird Ripples
  • Hot Jupiters, Planetary Migration: And Much More Left to Learn
  • Zodiacs, Dust and Loose Ends
• Kepler-138 c, d: "Water, Water Everywhere?"
  • More like Enceladus than Earth, But Not Quite Like Either
  • Too Much of a Good Thing: or Maybe Not
• Wolf 1069-b, Very Briefly
• Coming Attractions

More at A Catholic Citizen in America.

(Looking at the dust disk around AU Microscopii. Kepler-138 c and d: ocean worlds? Wolf 1069-b, briefly. And a new idea for sharing research data.)