http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. For centuries, humans have pondered what life on other planets beyond our solar system might be like. With the launch of the Kepler Spacecraft in 2009 we now have evidence for the widespread existence of such planets. Kepler's discovery of hundreds of planet candidates around other stars has inspired a new book that combines both science and science fiction: A Kepler's Dozen: Thirteen Stories about Distant Worlds that Really Exist. This anthology is co-edited by David Lee Summers (author of The Pirates of Sufiro and editor of Space Pirates) and Dr. Steve Howell (Kepler Project Scientist). http://phys.org/news287773438.html Space & Earth Tue, 14 May 2013 18:04:04 EST news287773438 NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a new planetary system that is home to five small planets around a slightly smaller star than our Sun. Two of them are super-Earth planets, most likely made of rock or ice mixed with rock, which are located in the habitable zone of their host star. This discovery is providing a target for the SETI search, since if life has thrived on these worlds and reached a point where civilization has developed complex technology, it may be detectable. http://phys.org/news285840612.html Space & Earth Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:50:04 EST news285840612 (Phys.org) —NASA's Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might be suitable for liquid water. http://phys.org/news285511672.html Space & Earth Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:00:08 EST news285511672 Observations by the Kepler satellite have advanced our knowledge of stars and their orbiting planets, yielding more than 100 confirmed planets and about 3,000 candidates. However, orbiting planets may not be the source for a fraction of those detections. http://phys.org/news282816989.html Space & Earth Mon, 18 Mar 2013 09:16:50 EST news282816989 Although hundreds of planets orbiting other stars have been discovered in the past 15 years, we cannot yet answer the age-old question of whether any of these planets are capable of sustaining life. However, new NASA technology may change that, by giving us our first look at distant planets that not only are the right size and traveling in the temperate habitable zone of their host star, but also show signs of potential life, such as atmospheric oxygen and liquid water. http://phys.org/news280146215.html Space & Earth Fri, 15 Feb 2013 11:10:06 EST news280146215 (Phys.org)—NASA's Kepler mission Monday announced the discovery of 461 new planet candidates. Four of the potential new planets are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's "habitable zone," the region in the planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet. http://phys.org/news276863638.html Space & Earth Tue, 08 Jan 2013 10:34:06 EST news276863638 There are currently 851 confirmed extra-solar planets. Of these, 289 were detected because their orbits (as seen from Earth) take them across the face of their host star, dimming the star's light in a transit event. The Kepler satellite has provided the largest set of transiting extra-solar planets and, if the list is expanded to include candidate planets (that is, planets spotted but not yet confirmed), it contains several thousand objects. Of the 289 confirmed transiting planets though, 194 were found with ground-based telescopes. http://phys.org/news274353119.html Space & Earth Mon, 10 Dec 2012 09:12:21 EST news274353119 Astronomers using infrared data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii have discovered a "super-Jupiter" around the bright star Kappa Andromedae, which now holds the record for the most massive star known to host a directly imaged planet or lightweight brown dwarf companion. http://phys.org/news272537770.html Space & Earth Mon, 19 Nov 2012 08:56:22 EST news272537770 (Phys.org)—Astrophysicist Konstantin Batygin has published a paper in the journal Nature arguing that the reason some planets lie in a tilt off the equatorial plane of their sun is because of the prior existence of another star that impacted their orbit. He suggests that systems that once hosted more than one star, but now do not, could also explain the existence of "Hot Jupiters" that have an orbit opposite of their host star. http://phys.org/news272181640.html Space & Earth Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:20:03 EST news272181640 (Phys.org)—Our solar system looks like many others, "flatter than pancakes," report UCLA astronomers who were able to statistically determine the properties of planetary systems using the latest data from NASA's Kepler space telescope. http://phys.org/news270124646.html Space & Earth Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:44:05 EST news270124646 (Phys.org)—New research led by Yale University scientists suggests that a rocky planet twice Earth's size orbiting a nearby star is a diamond planet. http://phys.org/news269106912.html Space & Earth Thu, 11 Oct 2012 08:00:08 EST news269106912 (Phys.org)—A star's internal chemistry can doom a planet's life long before the star itself dies. http://phys.org/news266216374.html Space & Earth Fri, 07 Sep 2012 05:59:42 EST news266216374 Dutch astronomers have found clear evidence that a faraway exoplanet is falling apart. New analysis of data from NASA's Kepler satellite shows that this exoplanet, which orbits its host star every 16 hours, has a massive dust tail originating from its surface, similar to a comet's tail. The study will be published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. http://phys.org/news265386430.html Space & Earth Tue, 28 Aug 2012 15:27:22 EST news265386430 In 1605, Johannes Kepler announced his first law of planetary motion, essentially stating that planets move around the sun with an elliptical, rather than circular, orbit. http://phys.org/news264770964.html Space & Earth Tue, 21 Aug 2012 12:30:11 EST news264770964 More than a 150 years ago, before Neptune was ever sighted in the night sky, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier predicted the planet's existence based on small deviations in the motion of Uranus. In a paper published today in the journal Science online, a group of researchers led by Dr. David Nesvorny of Southwest Research Institute has inferred another unseen planet, this time orbiting a distant star, marking the first success of this technique outside the solar system. http://phys.org/news255875557.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 May 2012 14:00:23 EST news255875557 (Phys.org) -- An international team of astronomers led by David Pinfield of the University of Hertfordshire has found a brown dwarf that is more than 99% hydrogen and helium. Described as ultra-cool, it has a temperature of just 400 degrees Celsius and its discovery could be a key step forward in helping astronomers distinguish between brown dwarfs and giant planets. The researchers publish their work in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. http://phys.org/news255852054.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 May 2012 07:30:01 EST news255852054 New research predicts the criteria needed for Earth-like planets to form around a star that have one-tenth the metallicity of our Sun. If researchers find small, rocky planets orbiting stars with lower metallicity, it may challenge the presently accepted "core accretion" model of planetary formation. http://phys.org/news253268314.html Space & Earth Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:18:52 EST news253268314 (PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of astronomers led by Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) made the observations of the planet GJ 1214b. http://phys.org/news249047835.html Space & Earth Tue, 21 Feb 2012 11:57:38 EST news249047835 Exoplanet discoveries are happening at a frenetic pace, and some of the latest newly discovered worlds are sometimes described as “Earth-Like” and “potentially habitable.” http://phys.org/news247221523.html Space & Earth Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:38:59 EST news247221523 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified Kepler planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, its host star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form. http://phys.org/news246815362.html Space & Earth Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:49:42 EST news246815362 Once again news from the Kepler mission is making the rounds, this time with a research paper outlining a theory that Earth-like planets may be more common around class F, G and K stars than originally expected. http://phys.org/news236425928.html Space & Earth Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:52:19 EST news236425928 (PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of astronomers has ruled out transits of a water-rich or hydrogen-helium atmosphere planet for Gliese 581e. The host star itself is relatively quiet which means good news for the potential habitability of at least one of its planets. http://phys.org/news226255766.html Space & Earth Thu, 02 Jun 2011 17:49:54 EST news226255766 (PhysOrg.com) -- University of Notre Dame astronomer David Bennett is co-author of a new paper describing the discovery of a new class of planets -- dark, isolated Jupiter-mass bodies floating alone in space, far from any host star. Bennett and the team of astronomers involved in the discovery believe that the planets were most likely ejected from developing planetary systems. http://phys.org/news224941738.html Space & Earth Wed, 18 May 2011 13:00:25 EST news224941738 (PhysOrg.com) -- Jupiter-like worlds around other stars push shock waves ahead of them, according to a team of UK astronomers. Just as the Earth's magnetic "bow-shock" protects us from the high-energy solar wind, these planetary shocks protect their atmospheres from their star's damaging emissions. Team member Dr Aline Vidotto of the University of St Andrews will present a new model based on observations made with the SuperWASP (Wide Angle Search for Planets) project on Monday 18 April at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno, Wales. http://phys.org/news222426501.html Space & Earth Tue, 19 Apr 2011 10:08:46 EST news222426501 Some estimates indicate that 25% of Sun-like stars have Earth-like planets. A new study now shows that these planets are almost certain to have oceans if they are located in the right temperature zone around their host stars. http://phys.org/news218459724.html Space & Earth Fri, 04 Mar 2011 12:00:01 EST news218459724 The discovery of a hot Jupiter exoplanet that transfers orbital momentum to its host star may hold the key to a clearer understanding of the evolution of common planetary systems, according to findings presented by Dr. Edward Guinan, a professor of astronomy at Villanova University in Villanova, Pa. http://phys.org/news214140614.html Space & Earth Thu, 13 Jan 2011 11:30:30 EST news214140614 The possibility of discovering a planet that is small, cool, rocky, orbiting a sunlike star and able to host life -- an Earth twin, in other words -- has made the search for planets outside of our solar system, or exoplanets, one of the hottest research areas in physical science. http://phys.org/news211627907.html Space & Earth Wed, 15 Dec 2010 09:31:59 EST news211627907 (PhysOrg.com) -- An exoplanet orbiting a star that entered our Milky Way from another galaxy has been detected by a European team of astronomers using the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. The Jupiter-like planet is particularly unusual, as it is orbiting a star nearing the end of its life and could be about to be engulfed by it, giving tantalizing clues about the fate of our own planetary system in the distant future. http://phys.org/news209312205.html Space & Earth Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:17:14 EST news209312205 (PhysOrg.com) -- The majority of extra-solar planets (about 278 of them) are more massive than Jupiter. About 20% of this majority group orbit their stars at a distances of less than one-tenth of an astronomical unit (one AU is the average distance of the Earth from the sun, and in our solar system Mercury is four-tenths of an AU from the sun). http://phys.org/news206976919.html Space & Earth Fri, 22 Oct 2010 14:41:31 EST news206976919 (PhysOrg.com) -- A planet about eight times the mass of Jupiter has been confirmed to orbit a Sun-like star that's some 300 times farther from its own star than Earth is from its sun. http://phys.org/news197031297.html Space & Earth Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:55:28 EST news197031297