When we look at the Solar System, what clues show us how it formed? We can see pieces of its formation in asteroids, comets and other small bodies that cluster on the fringes of our neighborhood (and sometimes, fly closer ...
Astronomy
Sep 8, 2014
42
0
Can life survive for billions of years longer than the expected timeline on Earth? As scientists discover older and older solar systems, it's likely that before long we'll find an ancient planet in a habitable zone. Knowing ...
Astronomy
May 7, 2015
14
5267
In the new blockbuster Avatar, humans visit the habitable - and inhabited - alien moon called Pandora. Life-bearing moons like Pandora or the Star Wars forest moon of Endor are a staple of science fiction. With NASA's Kepler ...
Astronomy
Dec 17, 2009
10
0
(PhysOrg.com) -- A mysterious planet-like object orbiting a not-quite-starlike "brown dwarf" is the most recent enigma discovered by astronomers with their ever-more powerful telescopes. Kamen Todorov, a graduate student ...
Astronomy
Apr 6, 2010
2
0
Can helium bond with other elements to form a stable compound? Students attentive to Utah State University professor Alex Boldyrev's introductory chemistry lectures would immediately respond "no." And they'd be correct – ...
Materials Science
Feb 6, 2017
1
1976
(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 ...
Astronomy
Apr 18, 2013
27
0
Earlier this year scientists presented evidence for Planet Nine, a Neptune-mass planet in an elliptical orbit 10 times farther from our Sun than Pluto. Since then theorists have puzzled over how this planet could end up in ...
Astronomy
May 3, 2016
19
335
The core mass of the giant exoplanet WASP-107b is much lower than what was thought necessary to build up the immense gas envelope surrounding giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, astronomers at Université de Montréal ...
Astronomy
Jan 18, 2021
1
1570
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study published on arXiv.org shows that, based on computer simulations, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune may not have been the only gas giants in our solar system. According to David Nesvorny from ...
Since its detection in 2014, the brown dwarf known as WISE 0855 has fascinated astronomers. Only 7.2 light-years from Earth, it is the coldest known object outside of our solar system and is just barely visible at infrared ...
Astronomy
Jul 6, 2016
8
1975
