Exoplanet

Finding alien life won’t be a flying saucer landing at the White House – NASA scientists will hold a press conference to excitedly show off a chart that’s incomprehensible to most people. Now we’re a step closer to that boring but groundbreaking day.

Astronomers have detected mysterious X-ray signals coming from a nearby white dwarf star for more than 40 years. We may now know where they’re coming from – the death throes of a planet being torn to shreds and raining down on the star.

Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet with a tail, like a gigantic comet. The planet, known as WASP-69b, is slowly evaporating in the radiation of its host star.

The official definition of a “planet” could be set to change again soon. Last time that happened, Pluto was kicked out of the club, but the new proposed definition is designed to be more inclusive.

Flat-Earthers might have been right all along – they were just a few billion years late. Scientists at the University of Central Lancashire have found that newly formed planets might take on a flatter shape, before rounding out.

A new NASA study has discovered a new exoplanet that is almost the size of Earth and orbits a star that's the same type as the Sun. Unfortunately, this promising candidate is also tidally locked and has one side so hot that it's one giant sea of lava.

Hubble has helped astronomers measure changes in the weather on an exoplanet. Forecasts for the planet Tylos predict a gigantic hurricane today with a top of over 3,000 °F (1,650 °C), followed by a strong chance of showers of molten iron tonight.

Look at the development of Earth-bound tech and you'll find fire at the heart of it, says a duo of researchers. And what does fire need to burn? Oxygen, whose chemical signature could provide clues to technological societies on worlds beyond our own.

Researchers from MIT and the University of Birmingham (UB) believe that they've cracked the formula for detecting habitable planets using currently available technology. It all has to do with an exoplanet's levels of carbon dioxide and ozone.

The James Webb Space Telescope has made the first direct analysis of clouds on a nearby alien world. These aren’t just made of water vapor but also sand, which would move around the planet much like Earth’s water cycle.

The chances of finding extraterrestrial life have improved slightly after NASA announced that its Hubble Space Telescope has confirmed the size of an Earth-sized exoplanet only 22 light-years from Earth, the nearest that passes in front of its star.

Move over TRAPPIST-1 – there’s an exciting new planetary system in town. Meet Kepler-385, home to seven Super-Earths that were just discovered in existing data.