Astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets around single stars, but few around binary stars—even though both types of stars are equally common. Physicists can now explain the dearth.
How common are Earth-like planets in the universe? When I started working on supernova explosions, I never imagined that my research would eventually lead me to ask a question about the origin of Earth-like planets. Yet that ...
In an unprecedented celestial event, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) captured the dramatic aftermath of colliding space rocks within a nearby planetary system.
Carl Sagan famously said that "We're all made of star stuff." But he didn't elaborate on how that actually happened. Yes, many of the molecules in our bodies could only have been created in massive supernovae explosions—hence ...
The giant planets weren't always where we find them today. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune formed in a more compact configuration and later underwent a violent reshuffling that scattered them to their current positions. ...
Rocky planets like our Earth may be far more common than previously thought, according to new research published in the journal Science Advances. It suggests that when our solar system formed, a nearby supernova (the massive ...
Of the seven Earth-sized worlds orbiting the red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, one planet in particular has attracted the attention of scientists. This planet orbits the star within the "Goldilocks zone"—a distance where water on ...
Observations with the instrument SPHERE at ESO's Very Large Telescope have produced an unprecedented gallery of "debris disks" in exoplanetary systems.
When a meteor streaks across the sky, it's not just beautiful. It's nature's way of delivering a time capsule to Earth. Contained within are hints about the very beginning of the solar system and how planets, including our ...
In 1949, famed mathematician and physicist John von Neumann delivered a series of addresses at the University of Illinois, where he introduced the concept of the "universal constructor." The theory was further detailed in ...
