The last two decades have seen an explosion of detections of exoplanets, as the sensitivity to smaller planets has dramatically improved thanks especially to the Kepler mission. These discoveries have found that the frequency ...
Astronomy
Jan 18, 2017
1
469
Interstellar forecast for a nearby star: Raining comets! NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered comets plunging onto the star HD 172555, which is a youthful 23 million years old and resides 95 light-years from Earth.
Astronomy
Jan 7, 2017
0
1013
Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology have demonstrated that the relatively high levels of precious metals (gold, platinum, etc.) in the Earth's mantle likely originated from one large-scale planetary impact prior to ...
Space Exploration
Oct 6, 2016
3
1
A team using the Hubble Space Telescope has imaged circumstellar disk structures (CDSs) around three stars similar to the sun. The stars are all G-type solar analogs, and the disks themselves share similarities with our Solar ...
Astronomy
Sep 14, 2016
0
17
On May 2, scientists from MIT, the University of Liège, and elsewhere announced they had discovered a planetary system, a mere 40 light years from Earth, that hosts three potentially habitable, Earth-sized worlds. Judging ...
Astronomy
Jul 20, 2016
7
996
A team of astronomers has confirmed the existence of a young planet, only 11 million years old, that orbits very close to its star (at 0.05 AU), with an orbital period of 5.4 days. Approximately 5 times the size of the Earth, ...
Astronomy
Jun 21, 2016
0
56
Is our little corner of the galaxy a special place? As of this date, we've discovered more than 1,500 exoplanets: planets orbiting stars other than our sun. Thousands more will be added to the list in the coming years as ...
Astronomy
Dec 11, 2015
1
29
At one time, astronomers believed the surface of Mars was crisscrossed by canal systems. This in turn gave rise to speculation that Mars was very much like Earth, capable of supporting life and home to a native civilization. ...
Space Exploration
Dec 7, 2015
0
23
BepiColombo is Europe's first mission to Mercury. It will set off in 2017 on a journey to the smallest and least explored terrestrial planet in our Solar System, following in the footsteps of Mariner 10 and Messenger.
Space Exploration
Oct 13, 2015
0
12
The Earth's atmosphere contains oxygen because plants continuously produce it through photosynthesis. This abundant supply of oxygen allows life forms like animals to flourish. Therefore, oxygen had been thought to be an ...
Astronomy
Sep 10, 2015
5
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