Habitability
A New Place to Search for Habitable Planets: “The Soot Line.”
The habitable zone is the region around a star where planets can maintain liquid water on their surface. It's axiomatic…
Venus is Like an Exoplanet that’s Right Next Door
We're lucky to have a neighbour like Venus, even though it's totally inhospitable, wildly different from the other rocky planets,…
Binary Dwarf Stars Found Orbiting Each Other Every 20 Hours. They Were Once Almost Touching
A team of astrophysicists has discovered a binary pair of ultra-cool dwarfs so close together that they look like a…
Could Next-Generation Telescopes See That Earth Has Life?
While the Earth absorbs a lot of energy from the Sun, a lot of it is reflected back into space.…
We Could Spread Life to the Milky Way With Comets. But Should We?
Here's a thorny problem: What if life doesn't always appear on planets that can support it? What if we find…
Could Life Survive on Frigid Exo-Earths? Maybe Under Ice Sheets
Our understanding of habitability relies entirely on the availability of liquid water. All life on Earth needs it, and there's…
What’s the Best Mix of Oceans to Land for a Habitable Planet?
Earth is about 29% land and 71% oceans. How significant is that mix for habitability? What does it tell us…
Curiosity Arrives in a Salty Region of Mars. Was it Left Over From a Dying Sea?
The Curiosity rover has now reached its primary target on Mount Sharp on Mars, the mountain in the middle of…
If Earth Were an Exoplanet, it Would Still be Tricky to Figure Out if There’s Life Here
How would Earth appear to alien astronomers? What would their observations tell them about Earth if they searched the heavens…
These are the Best Places to Search for Habitable Exomoons
Our Solar System contains eight planets and more than 200 moons. The large majority of those moons have no chance…