382 results
- Astronomy
Planet found around sun twin in star cluster
The exoplanet YBP1194b orbits a twin of the sun in the star cluster Messier 67. Astronomers found three planets orbiting stars in the cluster.
- Astronomy
Sun shines new life on Kepler space telescope
NASA approved a proposal to bring the crippled Kepler spacecraft back to life, using sunlight as balance to help the telescope search for planets and more.
- Astronomy
Rocky, overweight planet shakes up theories
Kepler-10c is a rocky exoplanet 17 times as massive as Earth, and astronomers are puzzled as to how it formed.
- Astronomy
Faint red stars can build water worlds drip by drip
Rocky planets around faint red stars have a hard time getting water, but they’re still probably the most common habitable locales in the Milky Way, new computer simulations suggest.
- Astronomy
Dust cloud, tail could explain exoplanet’s odd light pattern
KIC 12557548 b may be ejecting dust from its surface, creating a cometlike tail behind it and an opaque envelope of material around it.
- Astronomy
Clouds may keep exoplanets cool
Even when close to their stars, other worlds could harbor liquid water.
- Chemistry
Lasers wrest oxygen from carbon dioxide
By zapping oxygen molecules off carbon dioxide, an experiment hints that Earth may have had breathable air long before the dawn of plants.
- Astronomy
Beta Pictoris planet makes waves
Spiral waves whip through the belt of debris around a young star — and it’s all a giant planet’s fault.
- Space
Best cosmic ‘cradles of life’ may be elliptical in shape
Giant elliptical galaxies might harbor up to 10,000 times as many Earthlike planets than galaxies like the Milky Way.
- Space
Search for E.T. gets financial boost
Search for extraterrestrial intelligence gets a $100 million donation from a Russian entrepreneur.
- Planetary Science
Uninhabitable Earth
A recent estimate of the lifetimes of the habitability zones of Earth and various exoplanets suggests Earth could become unable to support life as soon as 1.75 billion years from now, when the sun brightens before dying out.
- Astronomy
Wandering planets, the smell of rain and more reader feedback
Readers consider how hard it would be to fashion Paleolithic tools, discuss what to call free-floating worlds and more.
