In June, the popular press went wild. A planet had been discovered that was so much like Earth it was heralded as our best bet for supporting life. Positioned 16 light years away, Gliese (or GJ) 832c was…
Articles on Exoplanets
Displaying 201 - 220 of 228 articles
Enrico Fermi, when asked about intelligent life on other planets, famously replied, “Where are they?” Any civilisation advanced enough to undertake interstellar travel would, he argued, in a brief period…
Author Douglas Adams famously had his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy remark that “space is really big”. But to my mind the sheer vastness of space is better encapsulated in the recent announcement of…
Over the past two decades, almost 1,500 exoplanets have been discovered orbiting distant stars – but Dutch astronomers have determined for the very first time just how fast one of those exoplanets is spinning…
Given that we are unlikely to be visiting an exoplanet any time soon, astronomers have been contemplating whether it might be possible to detect indications of simple life – a biosignature – from a distance…
In the Star Wars universe, everyone’s favourite furry aliens, the Ewoks, famously lived on the “forest moon of Endor”. In scientific terms, the Ewok’s home world would be referred to as an exomoon, which…
Last week, scientists announced the discovery of Kepler-186f, a planet 492 light years away in the Cygnus constellation. Kepler-186f is special because it marks the first planet almost exactly the same…
People around the world are being invited to learn how to hunt for planets, using two new online apps devised by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin and UC Santa Cruz. The apps use data from…
There is excitement in astronomy and planetary science departments worldwide as the new Gemini Planet Imager, housed in the Gemini South Telescope in the Chilean Andes, turns its razor-sharp gaze to the…
Astronomers didn’t know, 20 years ago, whether planets existed around any stars other than the Sun. All that changed in 1995 with the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting the star 51 Pegasi. And by the beginning…
Water has been detected in the atmosphere of a massive, hot planet orbiting the nearby star tau Boötis. Led by Alexandra…
Planetary science is beginning to catch up with science fiction. Since the launch of the Kepler space telescope in 2009, a deluge of planets outside of our solar system has been found, with many oddball…
Two papers were published today in Nature, each independently revealing that a planet discovered by the Kepler mission is the closest thing we’ve found yet to another Earth. But don’t pack your bags just…
How will future alien scientists know whether life existed in our solar system? One method may be to sift through the planetary debris left when our sun becomes a white dwarf. Astronomers are doing just…
Thanks to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, we’ve recently heard a great deal about how the Earth’s climate is changing. The IPCC’s cautious assessment of the…
Earth will be able to support life for at least another 1.75 billion years, according to new research by astrobiologists…
Earth is the only planet in our solar system with a long-term, stable supply of liquid water – essential for the formation and evolution of all organic life. But this doesn’t mean there aren’t other pockets…
A new study of data from NASA’s Hubble telescope shows that the distant star Fomalhaut b really is a massive exoplanet and squashes claims made last year that it was just a dust cloud, researchers said…
Earlier this week, a Swiss-based team searching for planets outside our solar system (exoplanets) published a paper in Nature announcing the detection of an Earth-mass planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri…
Over the past few months, NASA’s Kepler mission has repeatedly made headlines with announcements of new and unusual planetary systems around other stars. To name a few, we’ve had the most densely packed…
Top contributors
-
Professor (Astrophysics), University of Southern Queensland
-
University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona
-
Professor of Astrophysics Education, The Open University
-
Professor (Physics), University of Southern Queensland
-
Associate Dean for Research and Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences, University of Arizona
-
Lecturer, University of Southern Queensland
-
Postdoc astrophysicist, Mississippi State University
-
Associate Professor, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
-
Professor of Planetary Geosciences, The Open University
-
Ernest Rutherford Fellow, The Open University
-
PhD Candidate, University of Southern Queensland
-
Senior Lecturer in Physics, Nottingham Trent University
-
Senior Curator (Astronomy), Museums Victoria Research Institute; The University of Melbourne
-
W J McDonald Postdoctoral Fellow, The University of Texas at Austin
-
Professor and Associate Dean (Research), UNSW