Space and astronomy news
Astronomers from around the world gathered in Seattle today for the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Although it’s just past noon on the West Coast, the discoveries are already beginning to unfurl. Here are some of the highlights from this morning’s exoplanet session. And the keyword seems to be “water.” A Recipe for …
The search for worlds beyond our own is one of humankind’s greatest quests. Scientists have found thousands of exoplanets orbiting other stars in the Milky Way, but are still ironing out the details of what factors truly make a planet habitable. But thanks to researchers at Cornell University, their search may become a little easier. …
Continue reading “New Research Suggests Better Ways To Seek Out Pale Blue Dots”
Since it was founded in 1984, the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, California, has been a principal American venue for scientific efforts to discover evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations. In mid-November, the institute sponsored a conference, “Communicating across the Cosmos”, on the problems of devising and understanding messages from other worlds. The …
Continue reading “Communicating Across the Cosmos, Part 2: Petabytes from the Stars?”
Two potentially habitable planets in the Gliese 581 system are just false signals arising out of starstuff, a new study said. Gliese 581d and 581g are (study authors said) instead indications of the star’s activity and rotation. It’s the latest twist in a long tale about the system as astronomers struggle to understand how many …
Continue reading “A Brief History Of Gliese 581d and 581g, The Planets That May Not Be”
What a multitude of worlds! A new study suggests that the Milky Way could host 100 million planets with complex life, leaving no lack of choice for astronomers to look for organisms beyond Earth. The challenge is, however, that these worlds might be too far away from us to do much yet. “On the one hand, …
Continue reading “There Might Be 100 Million Planets In The Galaxy With Complex Life”
Alien planets that are slightly bigger than Earth could be more life-friendly than exoplanets closer to our own size, a new study implies. These so-called “super-Earths” that are about two to three times that of our own planet could be “superhabitable” — implying that our own planet is a rare bird indeed when it comes to being good …
Continue reading “Super-Earths Could Be More ‘Superhabitable’ Than Planets Like Ours”
Three decades ago we were unaware that exoplanets circled other stars. We had just started talking about dark matter but remained blissfully ignorant of dark energy. The Hubble Space Telescope was still on the drawing board and our understanding of the life cycle of stars, the evolution of galaxies, and the history of the Universe …
Continue reading “Enduring Quests and Daring Visions: NASA Lays Out a Roadmap for Astrophysics”
Astronomers have now discovered one thousand extrasolar planets, reaching a milestone in modern astronomy. (See a recent Universe Today article on the subject.) While many have contributed to this achievement, Dr. Sara Seager of MIT has played a large role over the past two decades by contributing vastly to the field of exoplanet characterization. Her …
Continue reading “Changing the Paradigm: Exoplanet Interview with Dr. Sara Seager”
As far as our understanding of life in the Universe goes, right now, we’re it. But the past decade has brought discoveries of hundreds of planets orbiting other stars, some of which could potentially host life. Fellow science journalist Lee Billings has written a new book about the exciting field of searching for extrasolar planets. …
Continue reading “Exoplanets and the Search for Life in the Universe: Q&A with author Lee Billings”
The upcoming Nov. 18 blastoff of NASA’s new MAVEN Mars orbiter is threatened by today’s US Federal Government shutdown. Launch processing work has now ceased! Spacecraft preps had been in full swing when MAVEN was unveiled to the media, including Universe Today, inside the clean room at the Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 27, 2013. …
Continue reading “Government Shutdown Stops MAVEN Work; Threatens NASA Mars Launch!”