Brown dwarfs are sometimes called failed stars, since they form like stars through gravitational collapse, but never gain enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion. The smallest brown dwarfs can overlap in mass with giant planets. ...
Astronomy
Dec 13, 2023
0
148
Astronomers know of about 60 rocky exoplanets orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars. When they try to determine how habitable these planets might be, detecting water in their atmospheres plays a huge role. But what ...
Planetary Sciences
Dec 7, 2023
0
55
University of California, Santa Cruz Professor of Planetary Sciences Francis Nimmo recently co-authored a Science Advances paper about the internal structure of the dwarf planet Eris.
Planetary Sciences
Nov 30, 2023
23
112
A recent study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society examines formation mechanisms for how binary planets—two large planetary bodies orbiting each other—can be produced from a type of tidal ...
Planetary Sciences
Nov 27, 2023
0
52
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has measured the size of the nearest Earth-sized exoplanet that passes across the face of a neighboring star. This alignment, called a transit, opens the door to follow-on studies to see what ...
Astronomy
Nov 16, 2023
0
154
They reveal the origin of wine, the age of bones and fossils, and they serve as diagnostic tools in medicine. Isotopes and isotopologues—molecules that differ only in the composition of their isotopes—also play an increasingly ...
Astronomy
Nov 7, 2023
0
100
Astronomers have found plenty of white dwarf stars surrounded by debris disks. Those disks are the remains of planets destroyed by the star as it evolved. But they've found one intact Jupiter-mass planet orbiting a white ...
Astronomy
Nov 2, 2023
0
46
With thousands of known exoplanets and tens of thousands likely to be discovered in the coming decades, it could be only a matter of time before we discover a planet with life. The trick is proving it. So far the focus has ...
Astrobiology
Oct 31, 2023
0
33
When the JWST activated its penetrating infrared eyes in July 2022, it faced a massive wish-list of targets compiled by an eager international astronomy community. Distant, early galaxies, nascent planets forming in dusty ...
Astronomy
Oct 30, 2023
0
60
Earth is our only example of a habitable planet, so it makes sense to search for Earth-size worlds when we're hunting for potentially-habitable exoplanets. When astronomers found seven of them orbiting a red dwarf star in ...
Planetary Sciences
Oct 23, 2023
0
45
