Planets
Officially, Only the Sun Can Have Planets. Is it Time to Fix the Definition of “Planet”?
What is the true definition of a planet, and could there be a more refined definition in the future? This…
Alpha Centauri Could Have a Super Jupiter in Orbit
The three-body problem is one of Nature's thorniest problems. The gravitational interactions and resulting movements of three bodies are notoriously…
If We Want To Find Life-Supporting Worlds, We Should Focus on Small Planets With Large Moons
There's no perfect way of doing anything, including searching for exoplanets. Every planet-hunting method has some type of bias. We've…
New Evidence for Our Solar System’s Ghost: Planet Nine
Does another undetected planet languish in our Solar System's distant reaches? Does it follow a distant orbit around the Sun…
The Giant Planets Migrated Between 60-100 Million Years After the Solar System Formed
Untangling what happened in our Solar System tens or hundreds of millions of years ago is challenging. Millions of objects…
Where Are All These Rogue Planets Coming From?
There's a population of planets that drifts through space untethered to any stars. They're called rogue planets or free-floating planets…
One in Twelve Stars Ate a Planet
That stars can eat planets is axiomatic. If a small enough planet gets too close to a large enough star,…
Improving a 1960s Plan to Explore the Giant Planets
In the 1960s, NASA engineers developed a series of small lifting-body aircraft that could be dropped into the atmosphere of…
Radio Telescope Confirms Free-Floating Binary Planets in the Orion Nebula
Planets orbit stars. That's axiomatic. Or at least it was until astronomers started finding rogue planets, also called free-floating planets…
Diamond Rain on Ice Giants Could Influence Their Magnetic Fields
Imagine Jupiter with a diamond core the size of Earth. That's what science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke described in…