An observational signature of evolved oceans on extra-solar terrestrial planets

For those who might have missed Wednesday's astro-ph listings, there
was the following paper posted by M. Jura:

Title: An observational signature of evolved oceans on extra-solar
terrestrial planets
Authors: M. Jura
Paper: astro-ph/0402584
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 01:15:40 GMT (12kb)
Comments: 10 pages, 2 figures, accepted by ApJ Letters

The increase in luminosity with time of a main sequence star
eventually can lead to substantial evaporation of the oceans on an
orbiting terrestrial planet. Subsequently, the gas phase water in the
planet's upper atmosphere can be photodissociated by stellar
ultraviolet and the resulting atomic hydrogen then may be lost in a
wind. This gaseous envelope may pass in front of the host star and
produce tansient, detectable ultraviolet absorption in the Lyman lines
in systems older than 1 Gyr.

( http://arXiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0402584 , 12kb)

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