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. New data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest a highly distorted supernova remnant may contain the most recent black hole formed in the Milky Way galaxy. The remnant appears to be the product of a rare explosion in which matter is ejected at high speeds along the poles of a rotating star. http://phys.org/news279986896.html Space & Earth Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:10:01 EST news279986896 (Phys.org)—A planet roughly 1.4 times the size of Jupiter is being consumed by its own star behind a shroud thanks to a magnesium veil absorbing all of certain light wavelengths, according to new observations by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). http://phys.org/news272709062.html Space & Earth Wed, 21 Nov 2012 08:32:26 EST news272709062 (Phys.org)—New movies of the transit of Venus on 6 June 2012, viewed from two different locations on Earth, clearly show the parallax effects that have made Venus transits so important historically. The results were presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Madrid, Spain. http://phys.org/news268298734.html Space & Earth Mon, 01 Oct 2012 08:26:32 EST news268298734 (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 A new superterran exoplanet (aka Super-Earth) was found in the stellar habitable zone of the red dwarf star Gliese 163 by the European HARPS team. The planet, Gliese 163c, has a minimum mass of 6.9 Earth masses and takes nearly 26 days to orbit its star. Superterrans are those exoplanets between two and ten Earth masses, which are more likely composed of rock and water. Gliese 163 is a nearby red dwarf star 50 light years away in the Dorado constellation. Another larger planet, Gliese 163b, was also found to orbit the star much closer with a nine days period. An additional third, but unconfirmed planet, might be orbiting the star much farther away. http://phys.org/news265623612.html Space & Earth Fri, 31 Aug 2012 09:20:36 EST news265623612 (Phys.org) -- Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have seen dramatic changes in the upper atmosphere of a faraway planet. Just after a violent flare on its parent star bathed it in intense X-ray radiation, the planet's atmosphere gave off a powerful burst of evaporation. The observations give a tantalizing glimpse of the changing climates and weather on planets outside our solar system. http://phys.org/news260095628.html Space & Earth Thu, 28 Jun 2012 09:47:43 EST news260095628 For the first time a new technique has allowed astronomers to study the atmosphere of an exoplanet in detail -- even though it does not pass in front of its parent star. An international team has used ESO's Very Large Telescope to directly catch the faint glow from the planet Tau Boötis b, solving a 15-year-old problem. The team also finds that the planet's atmosphere seems to be cooler higher up, differently from the expected. http://phys.org/news260010433.html Space & Earth Wed, 27 Jun 2012 13:00:05 EST news260010433 Even small telescopes can make big discoveries. Though the KELT North telescope in southern Arizona carries a lens no more powerful than a high-end digital camera, it's just revealed the existence of two very unusual faraway planets. http://phys.org/news258810820.html Space & Earth Wed, 13 Jun 2012 14:00:17 EST news258810820 (Phys.org) -- Astronomers from The University of Texas at Austin and Wesleyan University have used the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at UT Austin’s McDonald Observatory to confirm that a Jupiter-size planet in a nearby solar system is dissolving, albeit excruciatingly slowly, because of interactions with its parent star. Their findings could help astronomers better understand star-planet interactions in other star systems that might involve life. http://phys.org/news257705158.html Space & Earth Thu, 31 May 2012 17:46:07 EST news257705158 Researchers at MIT, NASA and elsewhere have detected a possible planet, some 1,500 light years away, that appears to be evaporating under the blistering heat of its parent star. The scientists infer that a long tail of debris — much like the tail of a comet — is following the planet, and that this tail may tell the story of the planet’s disintegration. According to the team’s calculations, the tiny exoplanet, not much larger than Mercury, will completely disintegrate within 100 million years.  http://phys.org/news256538263.html Space & Earth Fri, 18 May 2012 05:38:01 EST news256538263 Using models similar to those used in weapons research, scientists may soon know more about exoplanets, those objects beyond the realm of our solar system. http://phys.org/news247324694.html Space & Earth Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:18:25 EST news247324694 There are more exoplanets further away from their parent stars than originally thought, according to new astrophysics research. http://phys.org/news245594984.html Space & Earth Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:00:01 EST news245594984 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star to be in the so-called habitable zone where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface, but they are the smallest exoplanets ever confirmed around a star like our sun. http://phys.org/news243610019.html Space & Earth Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:27:13 EST news243610019 (PhysOrg.com) -- The NASA Kepler Mission is designed to survey a portion of our region of the Milky Way Galaxy to discover Earth-size planets in or near the “habitable zone,” the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist, and determine how many of the billions of stars in our galaxy have such planets. It now has another planet to add to its growing list. http://phys.org/news241888793.html Space & Earth Wed, 30 Nov 2011 15:20:03 EST news241888793 In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses. In a new paper, Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Edwin Turner (Princeton University) suggest a new technique for finding aliens: look for their city lights. http://phys.org/news239557564.html Space & Earth Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:46:14 EST news239557564 A nearby star is pummeling a companion planet with a barrage of X-rays a hundred thousand times more intense than the Earth receives from the Sun. http://phys.org/news235139379.html Space & Earth Tue, 13 Sep 2011 13:30:16 EST news235139379 For many exoplanet systems that have been discovered by the radial velocity method, astronomers have found excess emission in the infrared portion of the spectrum. This has generally been interpreted as remnants of a disk or collection of objects similar to our own Kupier belt, a ring of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Pluto. But as Kepler and other exoplanet finding missions rake in the candidates though transits of the parent star, astronomers began noticing something unusual: None of the exoplanet systems discovered through this method were known to have debris disks. Was this an odd selection effect, perhaps induced by the fact that transiting planets often orbit close to their parent stars, making them more likely to pass along the line of sight which could in turn, betray different formation scenarios? Or were astronomers simply not looking hard enough? A recent paper by astronomers at the Astrophysikalisches Institut in Germany attempts to answer that question. http://phys.org/news234522454.html Space & Earth Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:07:56 EST news234522454 The distant region beyond Saturn is too cold for liquid water, a necessity for life as we know it. But new research indicates that rocky planets far from their parent star could generate enough heat to keep water flowing - if their atmospheres were made up primarily of hydrogen. http://phys.org/news233573697.html Space & Earth Fri, 26 Aug 2011 10:35:06 EST news233573697 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have discovered the coldest class of star-like bodies, with temperatures as cool as the human body. http://phys.org/news233381686.html Space & Earth Wed, 24 Aug 2011 05:15:12 EST news233381686 Hot on the heels of confirming one Kepler planet, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope announces the confirmation of another planet. Another observatory, the Nordic Optical Telescope, confirms its first Kepler planet as well, this one as part of a binary system and providing new insights that may force astronomers to revisit and revise estimations on properties of other extrasolar planets. http://phys.org/news232014822.html Space & Earth Mon, 08 Aug 2011 09:40:09 EST news232014822 Until recently, astronomers were highly skeptical of whether or not planets should be possible in multiple star systems. It was expected that the constantly varying gravitational force would eventually tug the planet out of orbit. But despite doubts, astronomers have found several planets in just such star systems. Recently, astronomers announced another, this time in the trinary star HD 132563. http://phys.org/news229857362.html Space & Earth Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:10:20 EST news229857362 (PhysOrg.com) -- On the Earth, dust particles are everywhere - under beds, on bookshelves, even floating in the air. We take dust for granted. Dust is also common in space, and it is found for example in the cold, dark molecular clouds where stars are born. Dust is a critical ingredient of the cosmos for several reasons. It is a repository for many chemical elements (carbon and silicon, for example). It also acts as a catalyst for the chemical reactions that produce the many complex molecules observed in space, molecules which in turn play a key role in the heating and cooling of the clouds that leads to the formation of the next generation of stars (and their planets). http://phys.org/news229178230.html Space & Earth Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:37:35 EST news229178230 One of the first known stars to host an extrasolar planet, was that of 55 Cancri. The first planet in this system was reported in 1997 and today the system is known to host at least five planets, the inner most of which, 55 Cnc e, was recently discovered to transit the star, giving new information about this planet. http://phys.org/news223561027.html Space & Earth Mon, 02 May 2011 13:17:39 EST news223561027 (PhysOrg.com) -- Cardiff University astronomers believe that a young star's long "napping" could trigger the formation of a second generation of smaller stars and planets orbiting around it. http://phys.org/news218890848.html Space & Earth Wed, 09 Mar 2011 11:01:33 EST news218890848 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have imaged a very young brown dwarf, or failed star, in a tight orbit around a young nearby sun-like star. The discovery is expected to shed light on the early stages of solar system formation. http://phys.org/news199635354.html Space & Earth Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:16:21 EST news199635354 Hundreds of extrasolar planets have been found over the past decade and a half, most of them solitary worlds orbiting their parent star in seeming isolation. With further observation, however, one in three of these systems have been found to have two or more planets. Planets, it appears, come in bunches. Most of these systems contain planets that orbit too far from one another to feel each other's gravity. In just a handful of cases, planets have been found near enough to one another to interact gravitationally. http://phys.org/news199594786.html Space & Earth Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:30:01 EST news199594786 (PhysOrg.com) -- As if the debate over what is and what is not a planet hasn't gotten confusing enough, Hubble Space Telescope astronomers have now confirmed the existence of a tortured, baked object that could be called a "cometary planet." http://phys.org/news198428717.html Space & Earth Thu, 15 Jul 2010 16:05:49 EST news198428717 Two planet-hunting telescopes - CoRoT and Kepler - are keeping astronomers hard at work cataloging far-distant planets that orbit other stars in our galaxy. The search for distant planets is essential for astrobiologists who are hunting for habitable, Earth-like worlds beyond our solar system. http://phys.org/news196519900.html Space & Earth Wed, 23 Jun 2010 14:20:01 EST news196519900 Astronomers have measured a superstorm for the first time in the atmosphere of an exoplanet, the well-studied "hot Jupiter" HD209458b. The very high-precision observations of carbon monoxide gas show that it is streaming at enormous speed from the extremely hot day side to the cooler night side of the planet. The observations also allow another exciting "first" -- measuring the orbital speed of the exoplanet itself, providing a direct determination of its mass. http://phys.org/news196516499.html Space & Earth Wed, 23 Jun 2010 13:00:07 EST news196516499 (PhysOrg.com) -- Only 12 million years old, or less than three-thousandths of the age of the Sun, Beta Pictoris is 75% more massive than our parent star. It is located about 60 light-years away towards the constellation of Pictor (the Painter) and is one of the best-known examples of a star surrounded by a dusty debris disc [1]. http://phys.org/news195395123.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:00:01 EST news195395123