Space and astronomy news
That’s the kind of headline that can leave us scratching our heads. How can you see tree shadows on other worlds, when those planets are tens or hundreds of light years—or even further—away. As it turns out, there might be a way to do it. One team of researchers thinks that the idea could potentially …
By combining two exoplanet detection methods for the first time ever, the GRAVITY collaboration has confirmed the existence of a second planet around Beta Pictoris
Scientists are getting better at understanding exoplanets. We now know that they’re plentiful, and that they can even orbit dead white dwarf stars. Researchers are also getting better at understanding how they form, and what they’re made of. A new study says that some carbon-rich exoplanets could be made of silica, and even diamonds, under …
Continue reading “There Could Be Carbon-Rich Exoplanets Made Of Diamonds”
A machine learning algorithm created by scientists in the UK has confirmed 50 new exoplanets, effectively opening the door to AI-enabled exoplanet studies!
A new study by an international team of astronomers has shown that eclipsing binary stars could act as a natural “starshade,” making it easier to spot orbiting exoplanets.
Newborn exoplanets can have a tough life. They may form an atmosphere, but that atmosphere can be doomed. Their stars can emit intense X-ray and UV radiation, stripping away those atmospheres and laying their surfaces bare. A team of researchers from the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics looked at a family of four newborn sibling planets, …
Continue reading “Newborn Exoplanets can be Completely Stripped of Their Atmosphere by Stars”
Thanks to the success of the Kepler mission, we know that there are multitudes of exoplanets of a type called “Hot Jupiters.” These are gas giants that orbit so close to their stars that they reach extremely high temperatures. They also have exotic atmospheres, and those atmospheres contain a lot of strangeness, like clouds made …
Researchers from the Carl Sagan Institute have created a new model for assessing the habitability of exoplanets that orbit different types of stars
We’ve found thousands and thousands of exoplanets now. And spacecraft like TESS will likely find thousands and thousands more of them. But most exoplanets are gassy giants, molten hell-holes, or frozen wastes. How can we find those needles-in-the-haystack habitable worlds that may be out there? How can we narrow our search? Well, first of all, …
Continue reading “Ocean Circulation Might Be the Key to Finding Habitable Exoplanets”
When it deploys in 2025, NASA’s WFIRST mission will rely on the gravitational microlensing technique to locate exoplanets near the center of our galaxy.