The art of exoplanets

The moon hanging in the night sky sent Robert Hurt's mind into deep space—to a region some 40 light years away, in fact, where seven Earth-sized planets crowded close to a dim, red sun.

Planet Earth: 8 billion humans and dwindling resources

Are eight billion humans too many for planet Earth? As we reach this milestone on November 15, most experts say the bigger problem is the overconsumption of resources by the wealthiest residents.

Climate puzzle over origins of life on Earth

The mystery of why life on Earth evolved when it did has deepened with the publication of a new study in the latest edition of the journal Science.

Curiosity's first photo of home planet Earth from Mars

18 months into her mission to discover a habitable zone on the Red Planet, NASA's Curiosity rover has at last looked back to the inhabited zone of all humanity and snapped her 1st image of all 7 Billion Earthlings living ...

Five reasons to forget Mars for now and return to the moon

Hopes of colonising Mars rest on the premise that we could terraform the red planet, making it habitable for humans with a breathable atmosphere and clement temperatures. However, a recent study cast doubt on the idea, concluding ...

Astronomers puzzled by 'planet that shouldn't exist'

The search for planets outside our solar system—exoplanets—is one of the most rapidly growing fields in astronomy. Over the past few decades, more than 5,000 exoplanets have been detected and astronomers now estimate ...

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