Exoplanet

Astronomers may have found a world where it rains iron. The exoplanet is exposed to thousands of times the radiation that the Earth receives from the Sun, rendering the surface hot enough to vaporize metals that later fall as rain.

Astronomers have analyzed the atmosphere of a large exoplanet and found that it could have liquid water – and so possibly life – on its surface. This new study adds weight to the idea that habitable exoplanets don’t have to be strictly Earth-sized.

In 2016, astronomers discovered a potentially habitable Earth-sized exoplanet just four light-years away – and new observations suggest it isn’t alone. A second planet may be orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun.

A team of astrophysicists led by Princeton University has found an exoplanet that is within three million years of destruction. Situated 14,000 light-years away, WASP-12b is spiraling toward its sun and will eventually be destroyed by tidal forces.

NASA's TESS telescope has already notched up a few noteworthy achievements. Its latest feat, however, is also its most significant, with the space telescope having now identified its first Earth-sized exoplanet in the habitable zone.

Scientists have now come up with a new way of quickly identifying oxygen in the atmospheres of distant worlds, with plans to apply the technique to the observations of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope which is slated to launch next year.

New research from a team led by MIT's Clara Sousa-Silva suggests that ET might be rather odorous. The scientists determined that phosphine – an extremely foul gas – could be a sign of oxygen-averse life on other planets beyond the solar system.

ESA has successfully launched its Cheops telescope on a mission to make detailed follow-up studies of distant exoplanets discovered by earlier space-faring telescopes, such as Kepler and TESS.

The world has seen some major scientific achievements in the last 10 years, as discoveries and developments decades in the making were finally realized. New Atlas rounds up five of the most ground-breaking, history-making milestones of the 2010s.

Every planet we know of orbits a star – but that might not be a universal rule. According to calculations by researchers at NAOJ, planets could technically form around supermassive black holes, creating vast planetary systems of thousands of worlds.

For the first time, atmospheric chemistry and 3D climate modeling have been combined in a way that could help identify planets beyond our solar system which could host life.

NASA has released an enormous mosaic of the southern sky, stitched together from images captured by the agency’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) over the course of its first year of science observations.