Alien worlds resembling giant eyeballs might exist around red dwarf stars, and researchers are now proposing experiments to simulate these distant planets and see how capable they are of supporting life.
May 03, 2013
4.7 / 5 (7)
4
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
4.4 / 5 (8)
10
|
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
3.2 / 5 (19)
52
(Phys.org) —A University of Washington astronomer is using Earth's interstellar neighbors to learn the nature of certain stars too far away to be directly measured or observed, and the planets they may host.
Apr 26, 2013
4 / 5 (1)
0
|
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
5 / 5 (12)
6
NASA's Astrophysics Explorer Program has selected the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) Mission to fly in 2017. TESS will follow in the footsteps of NASA's pioneering Kepler Mission, continuing ...
Apr 22, 2013
4.9 / 5 (7)
1
(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
4.7 / 5 (43)
27
|
The number of potentially habitable planets is greater than previously thought, according to a new analysis by a Penn State researcher, and some of those planets are likely lurking around nearby stars.
Mar 12, 2013
5 / 5 (10)
5
|
Astronomers have their fingers crossed that within the haul of data collected by NASA's Kepler mission, which has already detected nearly three thousand possible exoplanets, hide the signatures of the very ...
Mar 05, 2013
5 / 5 (4)
1
|
(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
3.7 / 5 (17)
21
|
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
4.7 / 5 (14)
15
|
(Phys.org)—Researchers working on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project have completed their first "directed" search of a part of space and report in a paper they've uploaded to the ...
Feb 08, 2013
4.7 / 5 (16)
90
|
Using publicly available data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have found that six percent of red dwarf stars have habitable, Earth-sized ...
Feb 06, 2013
4.6 / 5 (34)
66
|
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
4.3 / 5 (9)
15
|
(Phys.org)—In their search for habitable worlds, astronomers have started to consider exomoons, or those likely orbiting planets outside the solar system. In a new study, a pair of researchers has found ...
Jan 10, 2013
5 / 5 (9)
7
|
