Newly discovered giant planet slingshots around its star

Astronomers have discovered a planet three times the mass of Jupiter that travels on a long, egg-shaped path around its star. If this planet were somehow placed into our own solar system, it would swing from within our asteroid ...

The low density of some exoplanets is confirmed

The Kepler mission and its extension, called K2, discovered thousands of exoplanets. It detected them using the transit technique, measuring the dip in light intensity whenever an orbiting planet moved across the face of ...

What if Earth stopped orbiting the sun?

In a previous article I investigated what would happen if the Earth stopped turning entirely, either locking to the sun or the background stars.

Four new giant planets detected around giant stars

(Phys.org)—An international team of astronomers reports the discovery of four new giant exoplanets orbiting stars much bigger than our sun. The newly detected alien worlds are enormous, with masses from 2.4 to 5.5 the mass ...

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