In order to better understand the composition of rocky exoplanets, researchers have proposed a method to identify chemical signatures from surface materials. A better understanding of exoplanet surface compositions will help ...
Astronomy
May 27, 2013
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(Phys.org) —The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has found signs of Earth-like planets in an unlikely place: the atmospheres of a pair of burnt-out stars in a nearby star cluster. The white dwarf stars are being polluted ...
Astronomy
May 9, 2013
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Alien worlds resembling giant eyeballs might exist around red dwarf stars, and researchers are now proposing experiments to simulate these distant planets and see how capable they are of supporting life.
Astronomy
May 3, 2013
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(Phys.org) —Because it has no source of energy, a dead star—known as a white dwarf—will eventually cool down and fade away. But circumstantial evidence suggests that white dwarfs can still support habitable planets, ...
Astronomy
Apr 24, 2013
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(Phys.org) —NASA's Kepler mission has discovered two new planetary systems that include three super-Earth-size planets in the "habitable zone," the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting ...
Astronomy
Apr 18, 2013
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(Phys.org) —Dramatic underground explosions, perhaps involving ice, are responsible for the pits inside these two large martian impact craters, imaged by ESA's Mars Express on 4 January.
Space Exploration
Apr 12, 2013
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NASA's Astrophysics Explorer Program has selected two missions for launch in 2017: a planet-hunting satellite and an International Space Station instrument to observe X-rays from stars.
Space Exploration
Apr 6, 2013
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The number of potentially habitable planets is greater than previously thought, according to a new analysis by a Penn State researcher, and some of those planets are likely lurking around nearby stars.
Astronomy
Mar 12, 2013
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(Phys.org)—Even dying stars could host planets with life—and if such life exists, we might be able to detect it within the next decade. This encouraging result comes from a new theoretical study of Earth-like planets ...
Astronomy
Feb 25, 2013
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An international team of astronomers has used nearly three years of high precision data from NASA's Kepler spacecraft to make the first observations of a planet outside our solar system that's smaller than Mercury, the smallest ...
Astronomy
Feb 20, 2013
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