Habitability
Do Red Dwarfs or Sunlike Stars Have More Earth-Sized Worlds?
Earth is our only example of a habitable planet, so it makes sense to search for Earth-size worlds when we're…
Venus has Clouds of Concentrated Sulfuric Acid, but Life Could Still Survive
A new study has found that some of the building blocks of organic molecules could survive in Venus clouds, suggesting…
Earth Might Have Formed in Just a Few Million Years
Earth formed about 4.6 billion years ago. That simplistic statement is common, and it's a good starting point for understanding…
Did Life Need Plate Tectonics to Emerge?
It's widely accepted that Earth's plate tectonics are a key factor in life's emergence. Plate tectonics allows heat to move…
Is it Time for a New Definition of “Habitable?”
Things tend to move from the simple to the complex when you're trying to understand something new. This is the…
A New Place to Search for Habitable Planets: “The Soot Line.”
The habitable zone is the region around a star where planets can maintain liquid water on their surface. It's axiomatic…
Venus is Like an Exoplanet that’s Right Next Door
We're lucky to have a neighbour like Venus, even though it's totally inhospitable, wildly different from the other rocky planets,…
Binary Dwarf Stars Found Orbiting Each Other Every 20 Hours. They Were Once Almost Touching
A team of astrophysicists has discovered a binary pair of ultra-cool dwarfs so close together that they look like a…
Could Next-Generation Telescopes See That Earth Has Life?
While the Earth absorbs a lot of energy from the Sun, a lot of it is reflected back into space.…
We Could Spread Life to the Milky Way With Comets. But Should We?
Here's a thorny problem: What if life doesn't always appear on planets that can support it? What if we find…