atmospheres

Atmospheres in the TRAPPIST-1 System Should be Long Gone

When the TRAPPIST-1 system was discovered, astronomers were elated to find seven Earth-sized worlds, three in the star's habitable zone.…

2 months ago

Worlds Bustling With Plantlife Should Shine in a Detectable Wavelength of Infrared

Future historians might look back on this time and call it the 'exoplanet age.' We've found over 5,000 exoplanets, and…

1 year ago

Scientists Discover a New Way Exoplanets Could Make Oxygen; Unfortunately, it Doesn’t Require Life

Finding oxygen in an exoplanet's atmosphere is a clue that life may be at work. On Earth, photosynthetic organisms absorb…

1 year ago

It’s Not Conclusive, But Methane is Probably the Best Sign of Life on Exoplanets

When the James Webb Space Telescope aims at exoplanet atmospheres, it'll use spectroscopy to identify chemical elements. One of the…

2 years ago

Smaller, Ground-Based Telescopes can Study Exoplanet Atmospheres too

The next step to understanding exoplanets is to understand their atmospheres better. Astronomers can determine a planet's mass, density, and…

2 years ago

Why are Neptune and Uranus Different Colors?

New research reveals why Uranus and Neptune are different shades of blue.

2 years ago

Stellar Flares May Not Condemn a Planet’s Habitability

Red dwarf stars are the most common kind of star in our neighbourhood, and probably in the Milky Way. Because…

3 years ago

An Exoplanet So Hot There Are 7 Different Kinds of Gaseous Metals in its Atmosphere

The search for exoplanets has revealed types of planets that are nothing like the worlds in our own Solar System.…

3 years ago

James Webb Will Look for Signs of Life on Planets Orbiting Dead Stars

Can the galaxy's dead stars help us in our search for life? A group of researchers from Cornell University thinks…

4 years ago

Extremely Hot Exoplanets Can Have Extreme Weather, Like Clouds of Aluminum Oxide and Titanium Rain

Thanks to the success of the Kepler mission, we know that there are multitudes of exoplanets of a type called…

4 years ago