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We now estimate that every star in the galaxy has at least one planet, but that is leaving aside the potentially billions more planets that were ejected from their solar system and are now hurtling through the universe all alone. More »
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There could be over 150 billion planets in our galaxy alone, which makes the chances of life on other words look very solid indeed. But there's one snag: the universe's most common stars might not support life at all. More »
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This striking image from the Cassini orbiter shows Saturn's northern hemisphere engulfed in a massive storm that has raged for well over a year. This storm was bigger than Earth when it began, and it's since gotten even more massive. More »
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NASA's Kepler telescope has now identified an insane 2,326 possible exoplanets. What's particularly shocking is how many of these planets are giant rocky planets known as Super-Earths, which defies everything we thought we knew about planet formation. More »
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A few months back, astronomers discovered a diamond planet formed from the remnants of an exploded star. It looked like a cosmic oddity, but giant diamond-encrusted planets might be way more common than we ever suspected. More »
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Many galaxies have gigantic black holes located at their center, but we're not usually able to actually see just how gigantic they are. Supermassive black holes are shrouded in huge dust clouds...which might be essential for the development of life. More »
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The asteroid belt is full of remnants of the ancient solar system, giant clumps of rock that might have formed a planet under different circumstances. Now we've found the first asteroid that's exactly how it was billions of years ago. More »
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This solar system just doesn't work. According to a new computer simulation, the planets could never have come together in their current configuration. The only explanation is that we once had a fifth gas giant...and it's still out there somewhere. More »
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All planets are vast clumps of dust and gas packed together by gravity. If there's lots of material, a gas giant is the result. If there isn't much material, you get a rocky planet. At least, that's what we thought. More »
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Exoplanet Kepler-19b orbits its star in ways that violate the laws of physics, speeding up and slowing down its orbit for no apparent reason. The only explanation is a second, hidden planet...making it the first "phantom" exoplanet ever found. More »
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We've got over 4 minutes of excellent ape footage that humanizes poor chimp Caesar — and makes Stargate's David Hewlett look like a galloping jackass. Rodney McKay, you leave that nice man alone. More »
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Last week saw Neptune Day, the first anniversary - in Neptune years - of the planet's discovery on September 23, 1846. That got us thinking: what are the "birthdays" for all the other planets? Here's a handy, mildly insane guide. More »
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It was only three months ago that the first ever close-up images of Mercury from orbit were taken by the MESSENGER probe. Now, in commemoration of MESSENGER's hundredth orbit of the first planet, here's a look at Mercury's colorful side. More »
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The Moon is ridiculously big relative to the size of Earth, and this was thought to be a cosmic rarity. Now it looks like rocky planets with huge moons are actually extremely common, which might help us find alien life. More »
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Mars is about half Earth's size and only a tenth its mass, which doesn't make sense. By rights, Mars should be as big as Earth and Venus. Now we know why Mars is small...it's because Jupiter is a big bully. More »
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The most recently discovered mineral is krotite, which was recently discovered in a meteorite fragment. Krotite has never been seen in nature before now, and yet its origins reach right back to the birth of the solar system. 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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Vesta is the asteroid belt's second largest object, but figuring out what it is has driven astronomers crazy. Is it an asteroid? A planet, perhaps a protoplanet? Whatever the answer, Vesta might just be the solar system's most important object. More »
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Black holes have a well-deserved reputation for being cosmic destroyers, ripping apart anything that comes into contact with their intense gravitational forces. But a radical new theory says advanced intelligent life could live on planets inside black holes. More »
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NASA's Messenger probe has already taken thousands of photos of Mercury's surface after coming into orbit around the planet earlier this week. And it's got plenty still to do, including searching for hidden pockets of ice on Mercury's boiling surface. More »
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This is a historic moment - for the first time ever, a probe has seen the solar system's innermost planet from orbit, and this is the photo it took just a few short hours ago. More »
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The so-called "serpent storm" that is raging in Saturn's northern hemisphere is so bright and so massive that we here on Earth can easily see it from almost a billion miles away, as this recent photo dramatically reveals. 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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Just 63 light-years away, there's a failed star known as a brown dwarf barely any bigger than Jupiter. It's temperature is way less than 100 degrees Celsius, which blurs the line even more between the smallest stars and biggest planets. More »
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There were many reasons why Pluto got demoted to dwarf planet status, one of which was that it couldn't clear its orbit of asteroids and other debris. But Earth's orbit is also crowded...too crowded for Earth to be a planet? More »
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Planets are sometimes ejected from their solar systems as other planets or passing stars whip up extreme gravitational forces. These starless worlds become cosmic wanderers, freezing slowly to death in the vast emptiness of space. But even that doesn't have to be the end - under the right conditions, these wandering planets could sustain life for billions and billions of years. More »
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We might just be on the verge of discovering a real Planet X, according to astronomers John Matese and Dan Whitmire. Subtle gravitational influences on comets way out in the Oort Cloud suggest there could be a huge gas giant affecting the other objects, and now NASA's Wise space telescope has given us the data to determine whether the planet really exists or not. For more on what Tyche might look like, check out The Independent - and for a little healthy skepticism about whether Tyche is really out there, check out Bad Astronomy. More »
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Far away in the frozen outermost depths of our solar system, there might be a hidden planet four times the size of Jupiter. This secret companion to the Sun could be responsible for sending comets into the inner solar system. More »
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It's not quite the impossible planet, but it's certainly very improbable. A planet has been discovered around a type of ancient star that scientists once believed couldn't support planets. Even more incredibly, the planet formed outside our galaxy. More »
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Pluto lost its status as a planet because of the discovery of Eris, another Kuiper Belt object that was slightly larger. But now Pluto has put Eris back in its place. More »
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Nikita's star has been cast... and it's not Maggie Q. The Cape gets a supervillain, and Transformers 3 may lose a key human castmember. Plus tons of details on Doctor Who's season opener and the Planet Of The Apes prequel! More »
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Ignore your familiar superheroes this week; the Comics We Crave are all about unfamiliar faces (or unfamiliar takes on familiar faces), the stories we never saw on television and even an alternate history of the 21st Century. Who could resist? More »
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For those still distraught about Pluto's demotion from full-fledged planet to dwarf, the battle is not over. The former planet has made some powerful allies who believe their discoveries will convince astronomers to bring Pluto back into the planetary fold. More »
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Yesterday, an amateur astronomer noticed that a large black spot had appeared near Jupiter's Southern pole. These first pictures of the phenomenon are prompting many to speculate that a passing comet or asteroid struck the gas giant. More »
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Is this the greatest time to be a fan of science fiction movies? No fewer than 30 SF films are hitting theaters, and at least a dozen could be great. Here's our 2009 movie forecast. More »
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Many astronomers regard Jupiter as Earth’s bodyguard, diligently attracting and smashing foreign bodies that could collide with Earth. But new simulations suggest that Jupiter’s role in the solar system may not be so beneficial. In fact, the gas giant may just have it in for the inner planets, including our own. More »
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A team of researchers at the University of Toronto have captured the first image of a planet orbiting a sun-like star. The image (click to enlarge) was taken at the Gemini Observatory in Hawaii, and the planet you're seeing here is about six times the mass of Jupiter. It's much farther from its star than Earth is, but luckily the planet is hot enough that it's probably keeping the aliens who live there toasty warm. The star system is 500 light years away. [via National Geographic] More »
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Well, we'd be screwed for one thing. Plus it's doubtful that the chunks of the moon would remain identifiable and intact like they are in this piece of concept art... but it's still haunting and beautiful. It's strange to imagine something that's been hanging in the sky your whole life plummeting into your world, but that's exactly what's happened in "Moon Crash 1: Winter." More »
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Dead Space, a new game from Electronic Arts, brings parasitic "we want to kill you, kill you, kill you" aliens back into fashion just in time for next Halloween. In the far future, humans have depleted all of the natural resources on Earth, so private corporations begin sending out enormous ships called "Planetcrackers" that carve off enormous chunks of planets, and then mine them down to their bare essentials. Of course, as often happens in these games, this pisses off an "ancient and malevolent force" who decides to start unleashing hell. In space. More »
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