The search for habitable worlds
Scientists identified 47 near-Earth stars as the most likely to have rocky planets with ideal surface temperatures for life.
Category: Exoplanets
Easy to understand explanations of all the latest research on planets outside of our solar system.
Finding alien life with light signals
Scientists compared light reflected from Earth to light reflected from Mars, and found that planets with life produce more complex,…
Objects at the border between planets and stars
Researchers studying a star-forming region in our galaxy found mysterious objects that are neither stars nor planets, but could be a new…
Is Earth’s water why intelligent life evolved here?
A Columbia University scientist argued that the existence of humans provides strong evidence that intelligent life is more likely to evolve…
Characterizing galaxies at “cosmic noon”
Astronomers studied 3 galaxies that formed 2 to 3 billion years after the Big Bang to calculate how much gas, stars, and dark matter they…
Searching for planets in a galaxy far away
Researchers surveyed over 20,000 stars thought to come from a nearby galaxy and found that no more than 1% harbored close-orbiting,…
What makes ‘chemically peculiar stars’ peculiar?
Scientists used a network of satellites to measure the rotational characteristics of 85 stars previously thought to have unique chemistries.
A halo of dark matter surrounding our Galaxy
Researchers studied the motions of stars in the outer regions of the Milky Way Galaxy and found that the gravitational field of a long,…
Has Earth received any radio signals from aliens?
Scientists affiliated with the SETI@home project analyzed 14 years of radio wave data collected by the Arecibo Telescope and identified 92…
“Radical mundanity” could explain why we haven’t met aliens
In response to the question, “Where are all the aliens?”, one astronomer argued that, if they are similar to humans, they may have faced…