Space and astronomy news
Remember all the habitable planets we’ve seen in science fiction movies? There’s wintry Hoth, for example, and overwhelmingly hot Dune. The folks in Interstellar visited an ocean world and a desolate rocky world. For all their differences, these places were still what they call on Star Trek M-class habitable worlds. Sure they weren’t all like …
Continue reading “Habitable Planets Will Most Likely be Cold, Dry “Pale Yellow Dots””
We don’t see many Neptune-sized worlds closely orbiting their star. That may be because the star robs them of their atmospheres.
NASA is seeking the public’s input for a Starshade that will allow ground-based telescopes to Directly Image exoplanets!
When white dwarfs go wild, their planets suffer through the resulting chaos. The evidence shows up later in and around the dying star’s atmosphere after it gobbles up planetary and cometary debris. That’s the conclusion a team of UCLA astronomers came to after studying the nearby white dwarf G238-44 in great detail. They found a …
Continue reading “A Dying Star’s Last Act was to Destroy all Its Planets”
Jupiter is composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. The amounts of each closely conform to the theoretical quantities in the primordial solar nebula. But it also contains other heavier elements, which astronomers call metals. Even though metals are a small component of Jupiter, their presence and distribution tell astronomers a lot. According to a …
A team of Chinese researchers has proposed a new mission to find Earth-like planets in neighboring star systems – the Closeby Habitable Exoplanet Survey (CHES)!
When the James Webb Space Telescope aims at exoplanet atmospheres, it’ll use spectroscopy to identify chemical elements. One of the things it’s looking for is methane, a chemical compound that can indicate the presence of life. Methane is a compelling biosignature. Finding a large amount of methane in an exoplanet’s atmosphere might be our most …
Continue reading “It’s Not Conclusive, But Methane is Probably the Best Sign of Life on Exoplanets”
Our Solar System was born in chaos. Collisions shaped and built the Earth and the other planets, and even delivered the building blocks of life. Without things smashing into each other, we might not be here. Thankfully, most of the collisions are in the past, and now our Solar System is a relatively calm place. …
There are now more than 5,000 known planets in the universe, and we’re just getting started.
NASA’s next great space telescope should launch no later than 2027. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a powerful wide-field infrared telescope that will create panoramic fields of view 100 times greater than Hubble’s. The Roman Telescope has a variety of scientific objectives, and one of its jobs is to complete a census of …
Continue reading “Dust Might Reveal the Presence of Habitable Planets”