exoplanets
Life on Earth Needed Iron. Will it be the Same on Other Worlds?
A lot has to go right for a planet to support life. Some of the circumstances that allow life to…
Astronomers Find a Planet That Orbits its Star in Just 16 HOURS!
Mercury is the speed champion in our Solar System. It orbits the Sun every 88 days, and its average speed…
A Space Telescope With one job: Find Habitable Planets at Alpha Centauri
Breakthrough Initiatives just announced a collaborative effort to launch a space telescope that will search for habitable planets around Alpha…
Eggshell Planets Have a Thin Brittle Crust and No Mountains or Tectonics
Planets without plate tectonics are unlikely to be habitable. But currently, we've never seen the surface of an exoplanet to…
Moons are Planets too
If we define planets as worlds that are geologically complex, then some moons are planets too.
Astronomers see a Moon-Forming Disk Around a Super-Jupiter
Recently, astronomers have been finding protoplanetary discs around certain stars. Their discovery has helped kick off a new work in…
Rare Planet Found Orbiting Three Stars
It's a hat-trick! Astronomers may have spotted the first ever known planet orbiting not one, not two, but three stars.…
A Technique to Find Oceans on Other Worlds
A new study shows how next-generation observatories could directly observe oceans on exoplanets, which could narrow the search for extraterrestrial…
Astronomers Look at Super-Earths That had Their Atmospheres Stripped Away by Their Stars
A new study examines two rocky exoplanets (TOI-1634b and TOI-1685b) that appear to have been stripped of their atmospheres.
Astronomers Detect Clouds on an Exoplanet, and Even Measure Their Altitude
An international research team shows how combining data from multiple observatories allowed them to detect clouds in the atmosphere of…