A roughly 3.5-mile high Martian mound that scientists suspect preserves evidence of a massive lake might actually have formed as a result of the Red Planet's famously dusty atmosphere, an analysis of the ...
May 06, 2013
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At this early stage in the search for extraterrestrial life in our solar system and beyond, the emphasis is on liquid water. Where it can exist on a planet's or moon's surface, so the thinking goes, life ...
May 03, 2013
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It was a Friday afternoon, Aug. 31 of last year, that Eric Agol, a 42-year-old associate professor of astronomy at the University of Washington, looked at his computer screen and saw something astounding.
Apr 28, 2013
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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 ...
Apr 22, 2013
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(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 ...
Apr 18, 2013
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(Phys.org)—Even dying stars could host planets with life—and if such life exists, we might be able to detect it within the next decade. This encouraging result comes from a new theoretical study of Earth-like ...
Feb 25, 2013
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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, ...
Feb 15, 2013
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Researchers searching the galaxy for planets that could pass the litmus test of sustaining water-based life must find whether those planets fall in a habitable zone, where they could be capable of having ...
Jan 30, 2013
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(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 ...
Jan 08, 2013
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Volunteers from the Planethunters.org website, part of the Oxford University-led Zooniverse project, have discovered 15 new planet candidates orbiting in the habitable zones of other stars. ...
Jan 07, 2013
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(Phys.org)—Astronomers find planets in strange places and wonder if they might support life. One such place would be in orbit around a white or brown dwarf. While neither is a star like the sun, both glow and so could be ...
Nov 20, 2012
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Located 43 light-years away in the southern constellation Pictor, the orange-colored dwarf star HD 40307 has previously been found to hold three "super-Earth" exoplanets in close orbit. Now, a team of researchers ...
Nov 08, 2012
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Meteoroids slamming against the atmospheres of alien worlds could add organic gases that make them look inhabited by life even if they are not, researchers say.
Sep 18, 2012
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(Phys.org)—Astronomers have discovered a veritable rogues' gallery of odd exoplanets—from scorching hot worlds with molten surfaces to frigid ice balls.
Sep 12, 2012
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(Phys.org)—Ancient Mars, like Earth today, was a diverse planet shaped by many different geologic processes. So when scientists, using rovers or orbiting spacecraft, detect a particular mineral there, they ...
Sep 12, 2012
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