https://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. A star called TOI-2155 lies around 1,350 light-years (839 trillion miles) from Earth. It is a little bigger, heavier and hotter than the sun, and it is not particularly interesting or unusual in itself. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-star-strange-inbetween-celestial-astronomers.html Astronomy Thu, 02 Jul 2026 12:40:08 EDT news702209042 Searching for habitable worlds beyond our solar system involves more than having a planet orbit within its star's habitable zone, the region where temperatures could be just right for liquid water to exist on the surface. On Earth, where water comprises approximately 75% of the planet's surface, life is abundant. But what about the exoplanet's star, specifically its activity and rotation? How could this influence how exoplanets are identified for current and future missions? https://phys.org/news/2026-07-star-sharpen-habitable-worlds.html Astrobiology Wed, 01 Jul 2026 19:20:01 EDT news702117020 Exoplanet atmospheres have become prime targets for astrobiologists in the search for life beyond Earth. This is because exoplanet surfaces can't be directly imaged yet, so astronomers must get creative in how they search for signs of life, also called biosignatures. Presently, powerful ground- and space-based telescopes like the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are improving in their ability to observe and analyze exoplanet atmospheres. But how did these atmospheres form and evolve, and what could this mean for the search for life beyond Earth? https://phys.org/news/2026-07-nautilus-array-track-exoplanet-atmospheres.html Space Exploration Wed, 01 Jul 2026 17:20:01 EDT news702117027 For the first time, NASA's TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission has identified a planet orbiting a distant star thanks to its warping of space-time. Unlike the star-hugging transiting planets TESS regularly reveals, the newfound microlensing world is a super-Jupiter orbiting far from its host star. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-tess-planet-years.html Astronomy Wed, 01 Jul 2026 15:21:57 EDT news702138094 Using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory, astronomers have taken a closer look at a nearby exoplanet and discovered it may be more Earth-like than previously thought. The planet, known as GJ 3378b, orbits a small, cool star called a red dwarf. Just 25 light-years from Earth in the direction of the northern constellation Camelopardalis, it lies in its star's "habitable zone"—the region where temperatures could allow liquid water to exist—making it a candidate to host life. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nearby-super-earth-candidate-life.html Astrobiology Tue, 30 Jun 2026 13:50:01 EDT news702044402 Artificial intelligence (AI) is continuing to have a disruptive impact on ever more parts of humanity. But what does it mean in the long run? A new paper, available as a preprint on arXiv from Austrian researcher Sergey Ivliev, extrapolates what the wide-scale adoption of AI means for the future of humanity in space—and in particular, what it means for the ultimate question of whether we're truly alone in the galaxy. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-space-ai-fermi-paradox.html Astrobiology Mon, 29 Jun 2026 22:00:01 EDT news701954739 Giant mirrors in space have been a staple of science fiction for decades. But so far, there's been very little work looking at the actual physics behind the concept—possibly because we're still so far from making them ourselves. Still, they could potentially serve as a passive technosignature if we manage to find one. In order to do that, though, we have to understand what we're looking for. That is the purpose of a new paper, available as a preprint on arXiv, by Shauna Sallmen of the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse and Eric Korpela of UC Berkeley. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-orbital-mechanics-giant-mirrors.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 29 Jun 2026 19:40:07 EDT news701954734 Within their planetary systems, stars are continuously shaping their orbiting planets through gravity, radiation and magnetic forces. So far, this relationship has appeared to be a one-way street. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-giant-exoplanet-magnetic-host-star.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 29 Jun 2026 07:40:01 EDT news701696940 It feels like every few months we get to report on another academic paper singing the praises of the Solar Gravitational Lens (SGL). Partly, this is due to Dr. Slava Turyshev's astounding productivity in pumping out academic articles, but partly because such a groundbreaking mission has lots of positive aspects—as well as challenges that need to be addressed. A new paper, posted to the arXiv preprint server from Dr. Turyshev, stresses an often overlooked feature of the SGL: how useful it can be for imaging things other than faraway exoplanets. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-solar-gravitational-lens-white-dwarfs.html Astronomy Sun, 28 Jun 2026 17:00:21 EDT news701440139 Uranus and Neptune remain two of the most mysterious objects in the solar system, primarily because they have been visited only by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986 and 1989, respectively. Their "ice giant" moniker comes from longstanding hypotheses that their interiors are comprised of an icy mantle beneath their hydrogen-helium atmospheres. While Jupiter and Saturn are also composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, Uranus and Neptune are hypothesized to have a layered structure composed of icy elements in their interiors. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-uranus-neptune-magma-worlds-ice.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 26 Jun 2026 19:20:01 EDT news701682242 An international collaboration has discovered two of the lowest-density giant planets ever detected: rare "super-puff" planets with densities lower than candy floss. The study—led by the University of Oxford, in collaboration with Université Côte d'Azur/Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur and the University of Birmingham—has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-super-puff-planets-lighter-candy.html Astronomy Wed, 24 Jun 2026 21:10:02 EDT news701508781 A new look at the heart of our Milky Way galaxy by Euclid, an ESA (European Space Agency) mission with NASA contributions, overlaps with a region scientists will observe with NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, launching later this summer. This sneak peek gives astronomers a major jumpstart on a core Roman survey, helping scientists learn more than they could from either telescope alone. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-euclid-mission-view-milky-heart.html Astronomy Wed, 24 Jun 2026 18:50:04 EDT news701540581 In this photo from June 21, 2026, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope arrives at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard NASA's Pegasus barge. After offloading and transportation to the spaceport's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, Roman will undergo processing ahead of launch, targeted no earlier than Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-image-roman-telescope-kennedy-space.html Astronomy Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:00:01 EDT news701536021 For just one day, our dark universe detective, Euclid, turned its gaze toward the light: the extremely bright inner region of our Milky Way galaxy, known as the galactic bulge. This special request came from astronomers who were after what Euclid does best: capturing huge areas of the sky in crisp detail. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-euclid-captures-million-stars-sharpest.html Astronomy Wed, 24 Jun 2026 12:40:01 EDT news701518093 You're the grillmaster at the annual family Fourth of July barbecue, and you're sweating bullets standing over the grill in the sweltering summer heat. You're trying to stay cool by pressing a cold beer can to your forehead, but to no avail. You can't go inside because, once again, you're the grillmaster and need to watch the food simmering on your freshly cleaned grill. Your brother-in-law is a university astronomy professor and walks over, asking how you're doing. You say, "This heat is killing me. I feel hotter than the barbecue!" Your science teacher brother-in-law slyly says, "Try being an exoplanet." You roll your eyes. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-hot-jupiter-star-powered-barbecue.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 24 Jun 2026 09:20:07 EDT news701510995 Vegetarians need not worry yet—plants will be on Earth for a long time to come. But not forever. The sun will ultimately determine the long-term existence of life on Earth. Its total energy output, called luminosity, has been increasing over epochs and eons by about 10% every billion years—determining much of Earth's surface temperature. This will continue for billions of years in the future. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-survive-earth-billion-years.html Astrobiology Tue, 23 Jun 2026 10:00:05 EDT news701425675 Current plans for flagship telescopes in the 2040s are focused on answering a simple question: Are we alone? Our best telescopes to date, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), have given us only tantalizing glimpses into the atmospheres of other worlds, but not enough to truly determine whether life as we know it exists there. Astronomers have been waiting for technology to catch up to their dreams of what is possible in new types of telescopes, and recently the W.M. Keck Institute for Space Studies released a report detailing the Large Interferometer For Exoplanets (LIFE) mission, which they hope will help provide a definitive answer to that simple question. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-astronomers-swarm-telescopes-life.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 22 Jun 2026 15:00:08 EDT news701352883 Finding life beyond our solar system is a major goal of modern astronomy. NASA's planned Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) aims to take direct images of Earth-sized planets around stars other than our sun. This task, however, is extraordinarily difficult, given that these planets are roughly 10 billion times fainter than their host stars. To detect them, scientists must find ways to suppress nearly all of the nearby starlight, which would otherwise overwhelm the faint planetary signal. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-telescope-mirror-stability-exoplanet.html Astronomy Thu, 18 Jun 2026 16:20:01 EDT news701011867 Northwestern University-led astronomers have discovered salty skies surrounding the universe's famous "Pink Planet." For more than a decade, the ancient, rosy-hazed world kept astronomers guessing. One of the coldest known planetary-mass companions ever directly imaged, the elusive object is too faint for astronomers to dissect its light from Earth. But new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal an atmosphere filled with exotic chemistry—and salty clouds unlike anything seen before. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-famous-pink-planet-harbors-salty.html Astronomy Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:00:09 EDT news700896902 It's 2158, and you're chugging away on your Ph.D. in planetary volcanology from the University of Utopia Planitia on Mars. Graduate students still get paid a sub-living wage, so you've been stuck eating freeze-dried ramen for the past three years. You've completed studying Jupiter's moon Io, but now you have to leave the solar system for a good exoplanet analog. While Io's volcanism is caused by tidal heating, you need an exoplanet whose volcanism is caused by extreme heat from its host star. You recently secured funding from the Exoplanet Research Institute for a faster-than-light (FTL) ship, but the exoplanet is required to be less than 50 light-years away. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-lava-planet-hydrogen-rich-atmosphere.html Astrobiology Wed, 17 Jun 2026 19:00:01 EDT news700914846 We're still in the definition phase of the Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO), but it seems like every week a new research group comes out with a paper helping to shape what is becoming one of the most important space telescopes of the 2040s. A new paper posted to the arXiv preprint server from a team of researchers led by Daniel Jaffe of the University of Texas at Austin contributes to this ongoing definition work by arguing that it's time HWO adopted a high-resolution near-IR spectroscopy capability—which sounds great in practice, but so far hasn't been attempted because of technological limitations. But, according to the paper, two recent inventions finally make a working version of an extremely high-resolution exoplanet hunter viable. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-high-res-secret-alien-life.html Astronomy Wed, 17 Jun 2026 13:20:09 EDT news700918802 One well-done gas giant, coming right up! That's the latest from researchers analyzing NASA's James Webb Space Telescope observations of HD 80606 b, an exoplanet four times the mass of Jupiter with an extremely elliptical orbit that sweeps close by its sun-like star. The research team is presenting its study and preliminary findings Tuesday at the 248th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS248) in Pasadena, California. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-webb-exoplanet-roasted.html Astronomy Wed, 17 Jun 2026 08:40:10 EDT news700903022 New research led by a scientist at IPAC—a science and data center for astrophysics and planetary science at Caltech—studying the hot Jupiter CoRoT-2 b has settled on one of the three leading hypotheses explaining why its atmosphere has a hot spot in the opposite direction from that seen on all other exoplanets of this type. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-oddball-exoplanet-hot-jupiter.html Astronomy Wed, 17 Jun 2026 07:20:09 EDT news700897261 Our search for technosignatures—clear signs of advanced civilizations beyond Earth—takes many forms. Many are driven by the famous Drake equation, which attempts to estimate how many technological civilizations there are in the Milky Way. However, there's a big fat question mark at the end of that equation in the form of a variable intended to account for the "longevity" of a civilization. And to be clear, that doesn't mean how long the civilization itself survives. It simply means how long it actively creates a signature that is detectable by our current technology. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-alien-megastructures-moon.html Astrobiology Tue, 16 Jun 2026 09:00:03 EDT news700810801 Italian astronomers have used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) to perform polarimetric observations of the star WRAY 15-1880 and its young circumstellar disk. Results of the new observations, presented June 10 on the arXiv preprint server, suggest that this disk may host a primitive planetary system. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-young-disk-wray-primitive-planetary.html Astronomy Tue, 16 Jun 2026 08:20:01 EDT news700802492 A debate has been raging among planetary scientists for more than a decade—why are there so few exoplanets with a radius of about 1.8 times that of Earth? Exoplanets are currently largely grouped into two distinct categories—"super-Earths" are below that size and have rocky interiors, whereas "sub-Neptunes" are above that size limit and appear puffier. But researchers don't really understand why the path of planetary evolution forces this bifurcation. A new mission proposal, called the Early eVolution Explorer (EVE), wants to find out, and a draft of its concept can be found in preprint form on arXiv. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nasa-early-evolution-explorer-mission.html Planetary Sciences Sun, 14 Jun 2026 15:30:03 EDT news700318541 The United States government's recent release of hundreds of previously classified unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs) cases spanning the 1940s to the present, along with the new Steven Spielberg movie, "Disclosure Day," about extraterrestrial life, has fueled the idea that aliens are visiting Earth. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-aliens-theyre.html Space Exploration Fri, 12 Jun 2026 10:00:08 EDT news700475161 Using the Subaru Telescope, astronomers have conducted follow-up observations of a recently discovered exoplanet known as TOI-1883 b. Results of the new observations, published June 5 on the arXiv preprint server, indicate that TOI-1883 b is a low-density super-Neptune. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-puffy-super-neptune-emerges-years.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 12 Jun 2026 08:00:04 EDT news700453179 Astronomers have revealed distinct differences in atmospheric conditions between the morning and evening transition zones of the ultra-hot gas planet WASP-121 b, which separate day from night, commonly called terminators. This achievement was only possible due to the unmatched sensitivity of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). https://phys.org/news/2026-06-jwst-reveals-dawn-dusk-atmosphere.html Astronomy Wed, 10 Jun 2026 05:00:01 EDT news700214341 The TRAPPIST-1 system, located about 41 light years from Earth, has been a focal point of much exoplanetary discussion—mainly because it has seven confirmed planets orbiting a dim M-dwarf star. Two of those planets—TRAPPIST-1e and -1f—are thought to be in the star's habitable zone. However, the habitable zone of M-dwarfs is so close to the star itself, the planets are likely tidally locked to it, meaning they have a permanent day and night side, with a "twilight terminator" in between. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-faster-alien-weather.html Planetary Sciences Sun, 07 Jun 2026 14:00:01 EDT news699540212