06/07/2026
Astronomers have identified several strong candidates for ocean planets, and the leading one sits just 100 light-years away.
TOI-1452 b is a super-Earth roughly 1.7 times wider than our planet and nearly five times more massive. Despite its larger size, its density is far lower than a rocky planet should be, which can only be explained if a significant fraction of its mass is water. Scientists estimate that between 20 and 30 percent of its total mass could be water, compared to less than 1 percent on Earth.
For comparison, Earth's oceans average about 3.7 kilometres in depth. On a true ocean planet, the water layer could extend hundreds of kilometres deep before reaching anything solid.
At those depths and pressures, water does not behave the way it does in any ocean on Earth. It transitions into exotic phases called supercritical water or high-pressure ice, states that do not exist naturally anywhere on our planet's surface. The ocean on such a world would be layered, shifting from liquid at the top to states of matter with no earthly equivalent as you descend.
A separate candidate, LHS 1140 b, sits 48 light-years from Earth. Webb telescope observations confirmed it is a rocky super-Earth rather than a gas giant, with a density profile consistent with a large liquid water ocean, making it currently considered one of the best candidates for a potentially habitable ocean world beyond our solar system.
No land. No continents. No beaches. Just ocean, going down further than any instrument we have ever built could measure, transitioning into states of water that have no name in any human language because we have never encountered them.
Whatever might live in such a place would have no concept of sky, of soil, of land. Its entire universe would be water in every direction, all the way down.
