Self-healing material can build itself from carbon in the air

A material designed by MIT chemical engineers can react with carbon dioxide from the air, to grow, strengthen, and even repair itself. The polymer, which might someday be used as construction or repair material or for protective ...

What is a terrestrial planet?

In studying our solar system over the course of many centuries, astronomers learned a great deal about the types of planets that exist in our universe. This knowledge has since expanded thanks to the discovery of extrasolar ...

Stars with planets on strange orbits: what's going on?

All the planets in our solar system orbit close to the sun's equatorial plane. Of the eight confirmed planets, the Earth's orbit is the most tilted, but even that tilt is still small, at just seven degrees.

Next breakthroughs in exoplanet discovery

It was a good week for astrobiology. Within days of NASA's announcement that the necessary ingredients for life exist in the plumes erupting from the southern pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus, scientists gathered at Stanford ...

Astronomers detect five new 'hot Jupiters'

(Phys.org)—Giant exoplanets, like the so-called 'hot Jupiters' that are similar in characteristics to the solar system's biggest planet and orbit very close to their host stars, are excellent targets for astronomers in ...

The implications of 'Oumuamua on the panspermia theory

On October 19, 2017, astronomers with the Pan-STARRS survey detected an interstellar object (ISO) passing through our solar system for the first time. The object, known as 1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua, stimulated significant scientific ...

Rapid destruction of Earth-like atmospheres by young stars

The discoveries of thousands of planets orbiting stars outside our solar system has made questions about the potential for life to form on these planets fundamentally important in modern science. Fundamentally important for ...

Computers that mimic the function of the brain

Researchers are always searching for improved technologies, but the most efficient computer possible already exists. It can learn and adapt without needing to be programmed or updated. It has nearly limitless memory, is difficult ...

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