If we could detect a clear, unambiguous biosignature on just one of the thousands of exoplanets we know of, it would be a huge, game-changing moment for humanity. But it's extremely difficult. We simply aren't in a place ...
Has the Holocene epoch of the past 11,700 years been supplanted by the proposed Anthropocene epoch of today? Although it's broadly accepted that planetary systems have changed as a result of human influence, a panel of experts ...
At a distance of 11.9 light years, Epsilon Indi (ε Indi) is an orange dwarf star (also known as a K dwarf) with 71% of the sun's diameter. An international team, led by Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA) researcher ...
How stable are planetary systems? Will Earth and its seven siblings always continue in their steady celestial paths, or might we one day be randomly ejected from our cosmic home?
At least one in a dozen stars show evidence of planetary ingestion according to a paper published in Nature today.
When we look out to the stars, it is typically not a yearning for the distant depths of outer space that drives us. When we are looking out there, we are truly looking back at ourselves. We try to understand our place in ...
Titan is the second-largest moon in the solar system and the only one with a dense atmosphere. At the top of this atmosphere, rich in nitrogen and methane, the sun's radiation produces a great diversity of organic molecules, ...
On October 19th, 2017, astronomers with the Pann-STARRS survey observed an interstellar object passing through our system—1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua. This was the first time an ISO was detected, confirming that such objects pass ...
How do planetary systems such as the solar system form? To find out, CNRS scientists taking part in an international research team studied a stellar nursery, the Orion Nebula, using the James Webb Space Telescope. By observing ...
Star Wars protagonist Luke Skywalker's childhood might have been slightly less harsh if he'd grown up on a more temperate Tatooine—like the ones identified in a new study.
