Planets
This Watch Puts the Solar System in Your Wrist
Scientists scanning the skies have located a small exoplanet with Earth-like characteristics except for one detail: it's scorching hot.
In what can only be described as a case of planetary balding, new research indicates that Mars once had a thick, lush atmosphere at one point in time that slowly thinned over time.
Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) of radio telescopes have spotted the first snow line in a distant, infant solar system for the first. The findings reveal more about solar systems in general, and how frozen molecules could speed up the formation of planets.
There could potentially be more than double the number of habitable exoplanets orbiting red dwarf stars out there thanks to clouds, asserts a new study. If the assumption holds true, then there could potentially be 60 billion habitable planets in our Milky Way alone.
NASA announced that it will be participating in the joint European-Japanese BepiColombo space mission that will be sending two spacecraft to study Mercury.
A strange new extrasolar planet is challenging conventional theories on planet formation, forming in an extremely short period of time at an incredible distance from its parent star.
Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have imaged and modeled a dust-filled region around a young star. The kicker? It's the first real-time look at the birth and growth process of larger cosmic objects such as comets and planets.
While NASA's Kepler spacecraft usually grabs all the planet-hunting headlines, today it's the European Space Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope. The ESO is reporting that it has directly observed the smallest planet outside of solar system, a mere 300 light-years away from us.
Two rare stellar alignments over the next few years will give planet hunters a rare chance at exploring Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our sun. NASA plans to pull out the big guns, and utilize the Hubble Space Telescope in an effort to locate Earth-sized planets around the relatively close red dwarf star.
New research into the weather patterns of Uranus and Neptune indicates that their ferocious winds exist in a thin, separate layer from the rest of the ice giants. The findings suggest that giant planets may mostly be static on the inside, veiled by a layer of chaos.
Despite the fact that Earth-like planets in habitable zones are being identified at a faster and faster rate, there's still no confirmation that life exists or could exist on any of them. One scientist is arguing that's because we need to think outside the box more.
Researchers conducting a theoretical study say it's easier to detect oxygen on planets orbiting dying stars adding that scientists should be able to find such potentially life sustaining planets within the next decade.
NASA's Kepler mission, whose goal is to search for and study habitable planets, has identified a rather tiny planet of significance recently: Kepler-37b is smallest planet we know of outside our solar system orbiting around a star similar to our sun.
Scientists got a better look at one of the dwarf planets orbiting our sun, and were surprised at what they found.
