The hunt for habitable ocean worlds beyond our solar system
IT LOOKS like there is nothing below the thick, hot clouds we are falling through. But descend a little further and the vista opens up to show an ocean as far as the eye can see. Its surface is steaming, feeding water vapour into the sky. Plunging into the waves, it is hot at first, but cools as we travel further into the darkness, the pressure becoming immense. We dive down hundreds of thousands of metres until we reach the bottom where, instead of rock, the sea floor is made of ice. We have landed on a water world.
