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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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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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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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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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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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Earth actually shares its orbit with a huge ring of dust particles. Alien astronomers would likely notice the dust ring long before seeing Earth itself, which could mean the best way to find alien planets is to look for dust. More »
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Astronomers believed that binary star systems were too volatile to support many planets, because the overlapping gravitational forces of the two stars would pull most planets apart. But one exoplanet 69 light-years away survives just fine...by orbiting the wrong way. More »
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While most of us have our eyes on Mars at the moment, there's a special class of astronomers who have their telescopes trained on planets a little bit farther away. Actually, a lot farther away - completely outside our solar system, in fact. We've found almost 300 extrasolar planets (or exoplanets) so far, and the search continues. Here are some surprising facts about planets that are way, way out there. More »
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