Extraterrestrial liquid water to have water, including liquid pressurised by non-atmospheric means, dissolved into mineral through ionising radiation. Water has also been found to flow on the large asteroid 4 Vesta heated through periodic impacts. Most known extrasolar planetary systems appear to have very different compositions to the Solar System, though there is probably sample bias arising from the detection methods. The goal of current searches is to find Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone of their planetary systems (also sometimes called the "Goldilocks zone"). Planets with oceans could include Earth-sized moons of giant planets, though it remains speculative whether such 'moons' really
Extraterrestrial liquid water Should planetary mass objects be present, a single, gas giant planet, with or without planetary mass moons, orbiting close to the circumstellar habitable zone, could prevent the necessary conditions from occurring in the system. However, it would mean that planetary mass objects, such as the icy bodies of the solar system, could have abundant quantities of liquid within them. Lunar maria are vast basaltic plains on the Moon that were thought to be bodies of water by early astronomers, who referred to them as "seas". Galileo expressed some doubt about the lunar 'seas' in his "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief