Space and astronomy news
The massive Kepler survey found a treasure trove of exoplanets. But in all that wealth they found three anomalies: what appeared to be rings of dust surrounding stars where planets should be. They were rocky planets in the process of being obliterated. And a team of astronomers that found a way to use these gory …
TESS has struck paydirt again. NASA’s planet-hunting spacecraft has found two new super-Earths orbiting a star only 33 light-years away. These are two of the closest rocky planets ever found.
The Moon has orbited Earth since the Solar System’s early days. Anyone who’s ever spent time at the ocean can’t fail to notice the Moon’s effect. The Moon drives the tides even in the world’s most remote inlets and bays. And tides may be vital to life’s emergence. But if Earth were more massive, the …
Continue reading “Massive Rocky Planets Probably Don’t Have big Moons”
In a new study, a team of Earth scientists shows how scientists could look for signs of a carbon-silicate cycle on exoplanets.
Researchers at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics published a paper last week that just might explain a mysterious gap in planet sizes beyond our solar system. Planets between 1.5 and 2 times Earth’s radius are strikingly rare. This new research suggests that the reason might be because planets slightly larger than this, called …
Continue reading “Larger Rocky Planets Might be Rare Because They Shrunk”
Would it be surprising to find a rocky planet that dates back to the very early Universe? It should be. The early Universe lacked the heavier elements necessary to form rocky planets. But astronomers have found one, right here in the Milky Way.
The TRAPPIST-1 system has long be studied by exoplanet hunters due to its unique quantity of planets that happen to also be Earth sized. In a recent paper, a team of scientists led by Eric Agol at the University of Washington, dove into more detail on the density of the seven known planets in the …
If you asked someone who was reasonably scientifically literate how Earth got its water, they’d likely tell you it came from asteroids—or maybe comets and planetesimals, too—that crashed into our planet in its early days. There’s detail, nuance, and uncertainty around that idea, but it’s widely believed to be the most likely reason that Earth …
Continue reading “There Might Be Water On All Rocky Planets”
Some very powerful telescopes will see first light in the near future. One of them is the long-awaited James Webb Space Telescope (JWST.) One of JWST’s roles—and the role of the other upcoming ‘scopes as well—is to look for biosignatures in the atmospheres of exoplanets. Now a new study is showing that finding those biosignatures …
According to a new study by members of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, there could be