Space and astronomy news
[/caption] Well, not only may up to 25% of Sun-like stars have Earth-like planets – but if they are in the right temperature zone, apparently they are almost certain to have oceans. Current thinking is that Earth’s oceans formed from the accreted material that built the planet, rather than being delivered by comets at a …
Continue reading “Astronomy Without A Telescope – So Why Not Exo-Oceans?”
[/caption] While astronomers have detected over 500 extrasolar planets during the past 15 years, this latest one might have the most storied and unusual past. But its future is also of great interest, as it could mirror the way our own solar system might meet its demise. This Jupiter-like planet, called HIP 13044 b, is …
Continue reading “Exoplanet of Extragalactic Origin Could Foretell Our Solar System’s Future”
[/caption] Awhile ago I wrote on the difficulty of finding young planets. There, I mentioned one team announcing the potential discovery of a planet a mere 1-5 million years old. But what are astronomers to do if they want to find even younger planets? The chief difficulty in this instance is that such planets would …
At best, the few extrasolar planets we have imaged directly are just points of light. But what can that light tell us about the planet? Maybe more than we thought. As you probably know the, Deep Impact spacecraft flew by comet Hartley 2 today, taking images from only 700 km away. But maneuvering to meet …
Continue reading “Simple Colors Could Provide First Details of Alien Worlds”
[/caption] A five-year survey of nearby solar-mass stars has provided astronomers with an estimate of how many stars of this type could have Earth-size planets. Andrew Howard and Geoffrey Marcy from the University of California Berkeley studied 166 G and K stars within 80 light-years of Earth, determining the number, mass and orbital distance of …
Continue reading “25% of Sun-Like Stars Could Host Earth-Sized Worlds”
[/caption] If you set a big black rock outside in the Sun for a few hours, then go and touch it, you’d expect the warmest part of the rock to be that which was facing the Sun, right? Well, when it comes to exoplanets, your expectations will be defied. A new analysis of a well-studied …
Continue reading “The Strange Warm Spot of upsilon Andromedae b”
The Gliese 581 system has been making headlines recently for the most newly announced planet that may lie in the habitable zone. Hopes were somewhat dashed when we were reminded that the certainty level of its discovery was only 3 sigma (95%, whereas most astronomical discoveries are at or above the 99% confidence level before …
[/caption] Every day, I wake up and flip through the titles and abstracts of recent articles posted to arXiv. With increasing regularity, papers pop up announcing the discovery of a new extra-solar planet. At this point, I keep scrolling. How many more hot Jupiters do you really want to hear about? If it’s a record …
Continue reading “Missing Molecules in Exoplanet Atmospheres”
[/caption] Despite recent news of potential habitable exoplanets and amazing images of Mars and the Saturn system returned from visiting spacecraft, the ol’ home planet is still about the most gorgeous-looking planetary body out there. We first saw it as a whole “blue marble” when the Apollo astronauts sent back pictures while circling the Moon, …
[/caption] Saturn’s moon Titan has long been thought to be an analog of early Earth, and a recent experiment demonstrates that amino acids and nucleotide bases — which are the basic building blocks of life on Earth – could very easily be under production in Titan’s hazy atmosphere. “Our intention was to figure out what …
Continue reading “Titan’s Atmosphere Could Produce Building Blocks of Life”