Space and astronomy news
The search for life is tied to the search for liquid water. That’s why astronomers are so keen on detecting rocky, Earth-like exoplanets in their stars’ habitable zones. In a habitable zone, a planet receives enough energy from its star to maintain liquid water on its surface, given the right atmospheric conditions. But in our …
Continue reading “17 Known Exoplanets Could Have Oceans of Liquid Water”
Astronomers know of about 60 rocky exoplanets orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars. When they try to determine how habitable these planets might be, detecting water in their atmospheres plays a huge role. But what if there was another way of measuring the water content in these worlds? Researchers are developing a way …
Continue reading “Astronomers Calculate Which Exoplanets Are Most Likely to Have Water”
New research shows how comets could deliver the building blocks for life in systems with close-orbiting planets, aiding in the search for life beyond our Solar System.
The JWST has delivered a breakthrough in planetary science. Its observations show that a long-proposed theory of planet formation is true. Up until now, thick veils of dust in young solar systems have obscured the evidence. But the JWST saw through it all, and now we know the truth: Ice-covered pebbles from outer solar systems …
Continue reading “JWST Shows Ice-Covered Pebbles Delivering Water to New Planets”
NASA’s Kepler mission ended in 2018 after more than nine years of fruitful planet-hunting. The space telescope discovered thousands of planets, many of which bear its name. But it also generated an enormous amount of data that exoplanet scientists are still analyzing. Now, a team of researchers has shed new light on a seven-planet system …
Continue reading “Old Data from Kepler Turns Up A System with Seven Planets”
Astronomers have found plenty of white dwarf stars surrounded by debris disks. Those disks are the remains of planets destroyed by the star as it evolved. But they’ve found one intact Jupiter-mass planet orbiting a white dwarf. Are there more white dwarf planets? Can terrestrial, Earth-like planets exist around white dwarfs?
Despite the fact that we’ve discovered thousands of them, exoplanets are hard to find. And some types are harder to find than others. Naturally, some of the hardest ones to find are the ones we most want to find. What can we do? Keep working on it, and that’s what a trio of Chinese scientists …
Continue reading “What’s the Best Way to Find Planets in the Habitable Zone?”
Using spectra obtained by Webb, an international team examined three TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets during a series of flares.
Earth was once entirely molten. Planetary scientists call this phase in a planet’s evolution a magma ocean, and Earth may have had more than one magma ocean phase. Earth cooled and, over 4.5 billion years, became the vibrant, life-supporting world it is today. Can the same thing happen to exo-lava worlds? Can studying them shed …
Continue reading “How Do Lava Worlds Become Earth-Like, Living Planets?”
The ESA launched Gaia in 2013 with one overarching goal: to map more than one billion stars in the Milky Way. Its vast collection of data is frequently used in published research. Gaia is an ambitious mission, though it seldom makes headlines on its own. But that could change.