As the search continues for Earth-size planets orbiting at just the right distance from their star, a region termed the habitable zone, the number of potentially life-supporting planets grows. In two decades we have progressed ...
Astronomy
Apr 22, 2015
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While looking for life on planets beyond our own solar system, a group of international scientists has created a colorful catalog containing reflection signatures of Earth life forms that might be found on planet surfaces ...
Astronomy
Mar 16, 2015
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NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, despite being hobbled by the loss of critical guidance systems, has discovered a star with three planets only slightly larger than Earth. The outermost planet orbits in the "Goldilocks" zone, ...
Astronomy
Jan 16, 2015
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Orbiting the Earth 353 miles above the ground, the Hubble Space Telescope silently pivots toward its new target. At the same time, flying 93 million miles away in interplanetary space, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope receives ...
Astronomy
Jan 13, 2015
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(Phys.org) —Justin Crepp, the Freimann Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame, has published a study Thursday (Nov. 13) in the journal Science that details how next-generation planet-hunting instruments ...
Astronomy
Nov 14, 2014
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Planets are formed from disks of gas and dust that orbit around young stars. Once the "seed" of the planet —composed of a small aggregate of dust— is formed, it will continue to gather material and it will carve out a ...
Astronomy
Sep 24, 2014
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Mercury has an oddball orbit—it takes longer for it to rotate on its axis and complete a day than it takes to orbit the sun and complete a year. Now, researchers suggest photosynthesis could take place on an alien planet ...
Astronomy
Sep 15, 2014
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Life as we know it on Earth is linked to our star, the Sun, which provides our planet with just the right amount of heat and energy for liquid water to be stable in our lakes, rivers and oceans. However, as the Sun ages, ...
Astronomy
Jul 4, 2014
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The Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) was built for one purpose: imaging extrasolar planets. In the seven months since it came online, GPI is proving to be an order-of-magnitude improvement-so much so that it may rewrite the rules ...
Astronomy
May 29, 2014
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(Phys.org) —Some Sun-like stars are 'Earth-eaters.' During their development they ingest large amounts of the rocky material from which 'terrestrial' planets like Earth, Mars and Venus are made.
Astronomy
May 20, 2014
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