When scientists detected phosphine in Venus' atmosphere in 2020, it triggered renewed, animated discussions about Venus and its potential habitability. It would be weird if the detection didn't generate interest since phosphine ...
Astronomers have made the rare discovery of a small, cold exoplanet and its massive outer companion—shedding light on the formation of planets like Earth.
A team of chemists and planetary scientists from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Nanoplanet Consulting and MIT has found evidence that a form of life that uses sulfuric acid as a liquid medium could exist in some of the ...
Universe Today has examined the potential for sending humans to Jupiter's icy moon, Europa, the planet Venus, and Saturn's largest moon, Titan, all despite their respective harsh environments and vast distances. These conversations ...
What are the clouds of Venus made of? Scientists know it's mainly made of sulfuric acid droplets, with some water, chlorine, and iron. Their concentrations vary with height in the thick and hostile Venusian atmosphere. But ...
A recent study posted to the arXiv preprint server and accepted to The Astrophysical Journal uses computer models to investigate why the exoplanet, TRAPPIST-1c, could not possess a thick carbon dioxide (CO2) atmosphere despite ...
Scientists at MIT, the University of Birmingham, and elsewhere say that astronomers' best chance of finding liquid water, and even life on other planets, is to look for the absence, rather than the presence, of a chemical ...
As astronomers have begun to gather data on the atmospheres of planets, we're learning about their compositions and evolution. Thick atmospheres are the easiest to study, but these same thick atmospheres can hide the surface ...
For the first time, an instrument to find planets light years away was used on an object in the solar system, in a study on Jupiter's winds.
The way astronomers study planets in our own solar system is surprisingly similar to the way they study exoplanets, despite the latter being orders of magnitude more distant. The key is spectroscopy—examining the wavelengths ...
