Space and astronomy news
NASA’s Kepler mission ended in 2018 after more than nine years of fruitful planet-hunting. The space telescope discovered thousands of planets, many of which bear its name. But it also generated an enormous amount of data that exoplanet scientists are still analyzing. Now, a team of researchers has shed new light on a seven-planet system …
Continue reading “Old Data from Kepler Turns Up A System with Seven Planets”
Astronomers have found plenty of white dwarf stars surrounded by debris disks. Those disks are the remains of planets destroyed by the star as it evolved. But they’ve found one intact Jupiter-mass planet orbiting a white dwarf. Are there more white dwarf planets? Can terrestrial, Earth-like planets exist around white dwarfs?
Despite the fact that we’ve discovered thousands of them, exoplanets are hard to find. And some types are harder to find than others. Naturally, some of the hardest ones to find are the ones we most want to find. What can we do? Keep working on it, and that’s what a trio of Chinese scientists …
Continue reading “What’s the Best Way to Find Planets in the Habitable Zone?”
Using spectra obtained by Webb, an international team examined three TRAPPIST-1 exoplanets during a series of flares.
Earth was once entirely molten. Planetary scientists call this phase in a planet’s evolution a magma ocean, and Earth may have had more than one magma ocean phase. Earth cooled and, over 4.5 billion years, became the vibrant, life-supporting world it is today. Can the same thing happen to exo-lava worlds? Can studying them shed …
Continue reading “How Do Lava Worlds Become Earth-Like, Living Planets?”
The ESA launched Gaia in 2013 with one overarching goal: to map more than one billion stars in the Milky Way. Its vast collection of data is frequently used in published research. Gaia is an ambitious mission, though it seldom makes headlines on its own. But that could change.
A new study recommends we stop looking for megastructures and start searching for advanced civilizations who have moved multiple planets in their star’s habitable zone.
With JWST safely in space, researchers are designing the next generation of space telescope that could Earth-sized worlds orbiting sunlike stars. Chinese scientists released a concept paper this week for the Tianlin mission, a 6-meter UV/Optical/IR space telescope, which could begin operations in 2045. This telescope would search for rocky planets in the habitable zones around nearby stars and search for biosignatures using direct imaging. The team estimates they could obtain the spectrum of 20 candidate exoplanets in the first five years of operation.
A new study estimates there could be hundreds of rogue planets nearby that we could explore for signs of extraterrestrial life!
One big question about Earth’s formation is, where did all the water come from? New data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows newly forming planets in a system 370 light-years away are surrounded by water vapor in their orbits. Although astronomers have detected water vapor in protoplanetary disks before, this is the first …
Continue reading “JWST Sees Newly Forming Planets Swimming in Water”