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This newly discovered planet is just 22 light-years away. Its discoverers are calling it the "new best candidate" to support water, and possibly life. The planet's unique features could even make it the ideal home for creatures like the Predator! More »
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Chalk another one up to NASA's Kepler Mission. The Agency's team of planet-hunters announced yesterday the discovery of 11 new planetary systems, which together harbor 26 brand spanking new planets. More »
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Something very strange is happening around the star KIC 12557548. Its light dims every 15 hours, as though a planet is orbiting around it...except the dimming varies wildly each time around. A planet is being vaporized before our eyes. More »
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When you combine a compound like water with intense heat, said water evaporates. No mystery there. But when you throw extreme pressure into the mix, something funny happens. The compound can actually achieve what is called a "supercritical" fluid state, taking on properties of liquid and gas alike. More »
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We used to think our planet was unique, but discoveries by planet-hunting missions like Kepler continue to indicate that the the odds of Earth being one-of-a-kind are incredibly slim. Now, findings published in today's issue of Nature suggest that there are far more planets in our galaxy that we ever imagined: More »
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Using light-curve analysis astronomers have found a strange, dust-ringed object orbiting a distant star. They all agree it's like a 'Saturn on steroids,' but what actually is rolling around inside those dust rings? More »
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2011 was a great year in the search for exoplanets, and it looks like 2012 is shaping up to be pretty fruitful, as well. Yesterday morning, just four days into the new year, astronomers announced the discovery of four massive new alien worlds, each one orbiting a star of its own. More »
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From law-violating subatomic particles to entirely new, earth-like worlds, 2011 was an incredible year for scientific discovery. In the past 12 months, scientific breakthroughs in fields ranging from archaeology to structural biochemistry have allowed humanity to rewrite history, and enabled us to open to brand new chapters in our development as a species. More »
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We've discovered many rocky planets around distant stars, but they're mostly super-Earths, much larger and more massive than our planet. Plus, most of these "super Earths" orbit stars vastly different from our Sun. Now we've discovered two planets that really could be Earth's twins. More »
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2011 will be remembered as the year that put exoplanets on everybody's starmaps. Though we'd discovered planets beyond our solar system before, this year astronomers offered more evidence than ever that our universe is packed with exoplanets - some of which might be very like our own rocky, waterlogged world. Here are ten images I created of the year's most incredible exoplanet discoveries. More »
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Astronomical artist Ron Miller creates scientifically accurate images of faraway worlds. In a continuing series for io9, he shares with us another image he's created of a newly formed planet that will one day be bigger than any world in our solar system. More »
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Once upon a time it was big news when any planet outside our solar system was discovered. Now the search is on to find Earth-like exoplanets... and such planets are being discovered on a regular basis. More »
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The Kepler-18 system is one of the galaxy's busiest places, with two Neptune-sized planets and a super-Earth orbiting around a single star. We know this, thanks to a bold new exoplanet-hunting technique that could help us find more Earth-like planets. More »
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An international research team has found an exoplanet made entirely of diamonds. Although this may seem glamorous, researchers think it is only the desolate remains of a star, robbed of its mass by its companion. More »
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On Earth, the Northern Lights, or aurorae, are caused when particles erupt from the sun and go skidding across the surface of our magnetosphere, creating vast glowing streaks in the sky and sometimes interfering with satellite communications. But what would the aurorae look like on other planets? One group of astrophysicists wanted to find out. So they used computer models to create this incredible video, showing what would happen if a coronal mass ejection, or super solar flare, caused aurorae on a "hot Jupiter," a gas giant close to its sun in another solar system. More »
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The aliens have arrived, and they want to initiate cultural exchange...starting small at first. Our extraterrestrial visitors want a few humans to go live with them, and in return, a few aliens will come live among us. They're seeking volunteers. More »
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Last year, Saturn's ordinarily serene surface was torn apart by a storm that grew within a month to cover an entire hemisphere with howling winds, enormous "beacons" of infrared light, and even icier cold than usual. Now scientists take us inside that storm for the first time, using satellite images. More »
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Let's face it: Faster than light travel may never be possible, and even near-light speeds may be a pipe dream. But what if we could open a wormhole, to let us jump to another solar system? Or travel in time? More »
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We usually think of planets as always orbiting stars, but it looks like a lot of planets are off on their own in space. Find out how they formed, why they're isolated, and how we spotted them. More »
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NASA has found a Jupiter-like planet that orbits in the opposite direction of its sun. No solar system would generate a planet orbiting like this on its own. So, what could make an entire planet reverse directions? More »
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At first, the exoplanet 55 Cancri e didn't look all that impressive: just another large rocky planet circling its star every couple of days. But a recalculation of its orbit has revealed that it's the galaxy's densest known planet. More »
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This week, the SETI Institute announced that it would have to shut down its large radio telescope facility, called the Allen Telescope Array, near the California mountain town Hat Creek. For over a decade, SETI has used the 42 radio dishes in its array to scan the skies for possible communications from extraterrestrial intelligence. More »
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There are plenty of things we take for granted. One is that most plants are green. Find out why that might not be true on other planets. More »
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The exoplanet WASP-12b, located 867 light-years from Earth, is just two million miles away from its star. It has a surface temperature of 4000 degrees Fahrenheit, and it has to take some seriously extreme measures to keep its atmosphere intact. More »
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If you're trying to get actual images of exoplanets, it helps to look at M-dwarfs, particularly young ones. More »
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The Effect of Exoplanet Mining on Debris Distribution in Asteroid BeltsForgan and Elvis via arXiv More »
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Dark matter might not just making the universe more massive than it should be, it might also be making the universe more populous than it should be. Find out how. More »
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This amazing image takes all 1,235 of the candidate planets spotted by NASA's Kepler telescope, and then shows them in orbit around their stars. And all of this is still just the tiniest fraction of the entire Milky Way. More »
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Over the last couple of years, our knowledge of alien worlds has skyrocketed. In this week's "Ask a Physicist," we'll talk about how we find exoplanets and why we might miss a second earth, even if it's right next door. More »
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In the search for Earth-like worlds, astronomers look for conditions that are roughly the same as those on our planet. But the assumption that most Earth-like planets will be found around stars like our Sun might not necessarily be true. More »
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The recent exoplanet spotting by NASA's Kepler probe revealed there might be more than a million Earth-like planets in our galaxy. Now a new estimate says as many as 1 out of every 37 sun-like stars has an Earth-like world. More »
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Of the 1235 possible planets discovered by NASA's Kepler telescope, one of the most exciting was KOI 326.01, which appeared to be roughly Earth's size and temperature. But it turns out the planet's habitability is just a big clerical error. More »
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We've considered the possibility that aliens could invade. Sometimes they fly, sometimes they walk, sometimes they sprout and take over our bodies when we're sleeping, but only rarely do they swim. There's a dearth of water-based aliens in media, despite the fact that statistics prove that in 60% of regular comic book continuity Aquaman's wife is an alien. These alarming numbers show that we need to pay more attention to how many exoplanets could have large oceans. To do that, we have to take a look at how oceans form. More »
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The Kepler telescope discovered more than 1,200 planets in just one tiny corner of the Milky Way. Crunching the numbers, a conservative estimate says there should be at least fifty billion planets in the entire galaxy, and about 500 million of those should be inside the habitable zone. But how many of those planets have life on them, let alone other intelligent beings? That's the question we still can't answer...but we're getting closer. More »
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Want to watch a fun conversation between two astronomers who are working on finding planets that might harbor Earthlike life? This is a terrific interview between American Museum of Natural History astrophysicist Mike Shara and Geoffrey Marcy, a UC Berkeley astronomer whose attempt to discover exoplanets was once, as he puts it, "treated like Star Trek." But now he's at the center of one of the most successful astronomy research teams in recent history - the Kepler group whose efforts have turned up dozens of exoplanets. Find out how Marcy did it, and where his research is headed next. More »
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This amazing video brings together all 1,236 exoplanet candidates that the Kepler telescope has spotted, and it imagines how they would look all together in a single solar system. All the planets are to scale and in the correct relative positions to their star. Prepare to be blown away by just how crowded our galaxy has gotten. More »
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In fifteen years, astronomers have detected just over 500 planets orbiting other stars. Now, after less than two years in orbit, the Kepler telescope has more than tripled that figure, discovering more than 1,200 possible new worlds. Even better, at least 54 of them are in their star's habitable zone, and five of these are Earth-sized planets. But here's the best part - Kepler only looked at one tiny corner of our galaxy. We really might be surrounded by millions of Earth-like planets after all. More »
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The six planets you see above are all considerably larger than Earth, and yet five of them orbit their star at a closer distance than Mercury. It's the most ridiculously packed solar system we've ever seen, and our current theories about how planets form are completely unable to explain how they all got there. It's a real exoplanet mystery, and the biggest discovery since we found exoplanets in the first place. More »
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Gliese 581g is the first planet other than Earth to exist within its star's habitable zone, meaning it could support human life. Now we've got an idea of what it looks like...and it's seriously spooky. More »
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The newest exoplanet a world of ridiculous extremes: it orbits its star at a mere fraction of the distance between the Sun and Mercury, it's four times the size of Jupiter, and the planet's temperature is hotter than some stars. More »
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