{"id":39961,"date":"2024-03-15T23:18:29","date_gmt":"2024-03-16T04:18:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=39961"},"modified":"2024-03-15T23:18:29","modified_gmt":"2024-03-16T04:18:29","slug":"word-of-the-day-946","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2024\/03\/15\/word-of-the-day-946\/","title":{"rendered":"Word Of The Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hycean<\/em>:<\/p>\n

A\u00a0hycean planet<\/b>\u00a0(\/\u02c8<\/span>h<\/span>a\u026a<\/span>\u0283<\/span>\u0259n<\/span>\/<\/a><\/span><\/span>\u00a0HY-sh\u0259n<\/i><\/a>;\u00a0portmanteau<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0hy<\/b>drogen and ocean<\/b>; note that the term is not capitalized)\u00a0is a particular type of\u00a0exoplanet<\/a>\u00a0that features a liquid water ocean under a\u00a0hydrogen<\/a>-rich\u00a0atmosphere<\/a>. [Wikipedia<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wonder how many English words are portmanteaus. Noted in “Habitable ocean world K2-18b may actually be inhospitable gas planet<\/em><\/a>,” Jonathan O\u2019Callaghan, NewScientist<\/strong><\/em> (9 March 2024, paywall):<\/p>\n

In 2015, astronomers discovered a planet 110 light years away called K2-18b, which later analysis estimated to be a super-Earth or mini-Neptune about eight times the mass of our world. Astronomers in 2019 then found evidence for water vapour on the planet. Since K2-18b is thought to be in the habitable zone of its star \u2013 the region in which water can exist as a liquid on the surface of a planet \u2013 that led to suggestions it might be an ocean world. Prospects were further buoyed by 2023 research finding\u00a0evidence of dimethyl sulphide<\/a>, a molecule that, on Earth, is only produced by life, particularly marine phytoplankton.<\/p>\n

But now,\u00a0Nicholas Wogan<\/a>\u00a0at the NASA Ames Research Center in California and his colleagues have re-analysed the planet using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and they suggest that the likelihood of the planet being a habitable ocean world is low. They say that an\u00a0abundance of methane and carbon dioxide<\/a>\u00a0found by JWST points to the planet being a gas-rich mini-Neptune with no surface, rather than a habitable super-Earth with an ocean and sea floor, because such gases would be broken down by a chemical process called photolysis if it were an ocean or \u201chycean\u201d world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hycean: A\u00a0hycean planet\u00a0(\/\u02c8ha\u026a\u0283\u0259n\/\u00a0HY-sh\u0259n;\u00a0portmanteau\u00a0of\u00a0hydrogen and ocean; note that the term is not capitalized)\u00a0is a particular type of\u00a0exoplanet\u00a0that features a liquid water ocean under a\u00a0hydrogen-rich\u00a0atmosphere. [Wikipedia] I wonder how many English words are portmanteaus. Noted in “Habitable ocean world K2-18b may actually be inhospitable gas planet,” Jonathan O\u2019Callaghan, NewScientist (9 March 2024, \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39962,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39961\/revisions\/39962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}