Earth’s pleasant, life-giving atmosphere is turning out to be somewhat of an oddity. To get a better understanding of exoplanets, a team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has recreated one of these alien atmospheres in the lab.
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Earth’s pleasant, life-giving atmosphere is turning out to be somewhat of an oddity. To get a better understanding of exoplanets, a team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has recreated one of these alien atmospheres in the lab.
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Most people think that the Earth's atmosphere stops a bit above 62 miles, but a new study based on observations by the US-European SOHO satellite shows that it actually extends as far 391,000 mi (630,000 km) or 50 times the Earth's diameter. This makes the Moon a very high altitude aircraft.
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A new study out of MIT suggests rising temperatures are causing energy shifts in Earth's atmosphere that are strengthening midlatitude storms, while weakening other important weather systems over North America, Europe and Asia.
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A type of world dubbed a "hot Neptune" has been conspicuously few and far between in terms of exoplanet discoveries, but a new observation may explain why. Hubble has now spotted a hot Neptune named GJ 3470b that’s vanishing at a record rate.
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Scientists may have discovered large amounts of water hidden deep beneath the surface of Jupiter’s famous Great Red Spot. The discovery, which was made using ground-based telescopes, opens up the possibility that extremophile lifeforms could exist in the atmosphere of the enigmatic gas giant.
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With surface temperatures of up to 4,327° C (7,820° F), exoplanet KELT-9b is hotter than many stars – and, according to a new discovery, hot enough to vaporize heavy metals. Researchers have now detected iron and titanium vapor in KELT-9b’s atmosphere.
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It’s long been thought that spiders were "ballooning" on silk parachutes thanks to the wind picking them up, but a new study has found that the creatures are actually making use of atmospheric electric fields instead.
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Although there are trillions of liters of water floating around in the air, it’s not easily accessible. Now engineers have developed a device powered by the Sun that can pluck practical quantities of drinkable water out of thin air, and they've successfully field-tested it in the Arizona desert.
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An important arm of exoplanet research involves the study of the atmospheres that surround these distant worlds. The molecules they hold can reveal valuable insights into what kind conditions can be found there – along with ones that cannot.
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