Mars holds a special place in the solar system. It represents marginal habitability. This means it transitioned from warm and wet and potentially hospitable, to cold and dry and inhospitable.
Astrobiology
May 26, 2026
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25
The thinking around exoplanet habitability is mostly concerned with a planet's distance from its star. Too close, and any surface water is boiled away into space. Too far, and surface water is frozen. Both are severe limits ...
Astrobiology
May 25, 2026
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75
When you look up at the sky on a sunny day, the sun might seem like a bright spot, unchanging in the sky. But the sun is a complex, dynamic celestial body, wrapped in electrical currents and magnetic fields that constantly ...
Astronomy
May 24, 2026
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The liquid iron in Earth's outer core doesn't always behave as expected. When it changed direction in an unexplained way, ESA satellites provided data on the direction of flow, helping scientists gain better insight into ...
Planetary Sciences
May 22, 2026
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458
Astronomers from Italy and Brazil have investigated a nearby red dwarf star known as Ross 318 and have discovered an exoplanet orbiting this star, which is at least six times more massive than Earth. The discovery is reported ...
When the solar system formed, a disk of gas and dust orbited the young sun. Over the course of millions of years, the dust gradually clumped together to form kilometer-sized chunks known as planetesimals. Some grew into planets, ...
Planetary Sciences
May 22, 2026
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A planet that is about the size of Saturn, but with a temperature more like Earth's, has an atmosphere rich in methane, according to a new study using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Astronomy
May 21, 2026
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119
Suppose there are signs of extraterrestrial life and we have not yet been able to detect them. What does that mean? In Nature Astronomy, researchers discuss the consequences of these so-called false-negative results. "We ...
Astrobiology
May 21, 2026
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59
On May 21, ground controllers powered down NASA's AWE (Atmospheric Waves Experiment) instrument, bringing the data collection phase of the mission to a successful and scheduled end, surpassing its planned two-year mission.
Planetary Sciences
May 21, 2026
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36
Sand clouds form every morning but clear up by nightfall on WASP-94A b, a well-studied gas giant in a constellation located nearly 700 light years away from Earth. Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), research ...
Astronomy
May 21, 2026
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