In the "Star Wars" universe, ice, ocean and desert planets burst from the darkness as your ship drops out of light speed. But these worlds might be more than just science fiction.
Astronomy
Dec 16, 2016
6
163
The scorching hot exoplanet WASP-121b may not be shredding any heavy metal guitar riffs, but it is sending heavy metals such as iron and magnesium into space. The distant planet's atmosphere is so hot that metal is vaporizing ...
Astronomy
Aug 1, 2019
5
687
(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers announced today that they have discovered a "super-Earth" orbiting a red dwarf star 40 light-years from Earth. They found the distant planet with a small fleet of ground-based telescopes no larger ...
Astronomy
Dec 16, 2009
10
0
The best hope for finding life on another world isn't listening for coded messages or traveling to distant stars, it's detecting the chemical signs of life in exoplanet atmospheres. This long hoped-for achievement is often ...
Astrobiology
Jun 19, 2023
0
1069
New images obtained on May 16, 2016, by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope confirm the presence of a dark vortex in the atmosphere of Neptune. This full visible-light image shows that the dark feature resides near and below a ...
Astronomy
Jun 24, 2016
1
510
(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have measured the diameter of the dwarf planet Eris by catching it as it passed in front of a faint star. This was seen by telescopes in Chile, including the TRAPPIST telescope at ESO's La Silla ...
Astronomy
Oct 26, 2011
9
0
Photosynthesis maintains Earth's habitability for life as we know it, and shapes the way we search for habitable worlds around distant stars. Scientists have discovered a microbe that can use low-energy light to perform photosynthesis. ...
Cell & Microbiology
Mar 16, 2012
7
3
Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers have detected a new exoplanet orbiting a distant star. The newfound alien world, designated TOI-4603 b is the size of Jupiter and about 13 times more ...
"Space is Big. Really Big." The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pretty much nailed space with those five words. And space is so really big that our earthly measures of distance struggle.
Astronomy
Aug 21, 2013
17
0
(PhysOrg.com) -- Armchair explorers of the cosmos can now have at their fingertips the nearly 2,000 distant planetary systems discovered by NASA's Kepler Mission. Kepler Explorer, an innovative app for iPads and iPhones developed ...
Space Exploration
Apr 3, 2012
2
0
