exoplanets
Planets Form in Just a Few Hundred Thousand Years
Astronomers like to observe young planets forming in circumstellar debris disks, the rotating rings of material around young stars. But…
Astronomers Estimate There Are 6 Billion Earth-Like Planets in the Milky Way
Six billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way? If true, that's astounding. But the number needs some context. The Milky…
Newborn Exoplanets can be Completely Stripped of Their Atmosphere by Stars
Newborn exoplanets can have a tough life. They may form an atmosphere, but that atmosphere can be doomed. Their stars…
Tiny Cubesat Detects an Exoplanet
A team of MIT researchers have observed a Super-Earth using a CubeSat, making it the smallest satellite to study an…
It Should Be Easiest to Search for Young Earth-like Planets When They’re Completely Covered in Magma
How did Earth evolve from an ocean of magma to the vibrant, life-supporting, blue jewel it is now? In its…
Is the Concept of a Habitable Zone Too Wide?
Exoplanets are often considered potentially habitable if they could have liquid water. But the necessities of biology set the habitability…
Extremely Hot Exoplanets Can Have Extreme Weather, Like Clouds of Aluminum Oxide and Titanium Rain
Thanks to the success of the Kepler mission, we know that there are multitudes of exoplanets of a type called…
What Are Some Clues to the Climates of Exoplanets?
Researchers from the Carl Sagan Institute have created a new model for assessing the habitability of exoplanets that orbit different…
This is an Actual Image of a Planet-Forming Disc in a Distant Star System
In 2017, astronomers used ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array) to look at the star AB Aurigae. It's a type of…
Ocean Circulation Might Be the Key to Finding Habitable Exoplanets
We've found thousands and thousands of exoplanets now. And spacecraft like TESS will likely find thousands and thousands more of…