Planet

Exotic forms of carbon were predicted to exist under extremely high pressures. But in a new study researchers have examined carbon under the highest pressure ever studied in the lab, and found that diamond sticks around much longer than expected.

Astronomers have discovered a nearby system of exoplanets with unusually orderly orbits but disordered densities. Five of the six planets circle the star in a rare rhythmic dance called a resonance chain, while their densities are weirdly shuffled.

Researchers at the Paris Observatory's Institute of Celestial Mechanics and Ephemeris Calculation have found that the unusual tilt of Saturn's axis is due to the periodic gravitational pull of its moons over the last billion years.

WASP-107b was already a very weird exoplanet, with the density of cotton candy. On closer inspection, astronomers have now found that its density is even lower than previously thought, defying our current understanding of how gas giants even form.

There are worlds out there so weird they’d put Dr. Who writers to shame. The latest to join the ranks is K2-141b, a scorching planet where it rains rocks, winds whip at supersonic speeds and huge swaths of the surface are covered in lava oceans.

While almost every planet ever found orbits a star, there are some loners that roam the cosmos entirely on their own. Now astronomers have spotted the smallest of these “rogue planets” ever discovered, which is only the size of Earth or smaller.

Astronomers have discovered a new exoplanet that belongs in a brand new class – an “ultrahot Neptune.” Known as LTT 9779b, the planet orbits extremely close to its star, and raises questions about how such a system came to be.

NASA has discovered a strange star system where a gas giant planet is tightly orbiting a tiny white dwarf. This the first sighting of such an arrangement, raising questions about how the planet survived the star’s expansive death in the first place.

Perhaps on other planets, diamonds are as common and boring as rocks. Astronomers suggest that some planets might actually be largely made of diamonds, and now a team has calculated how such a planet could form and how it would be structured.

The way things are in our solar system aren't always how they work elsewhere in the universe. Now, astronomers have observed a triple star system that’s warping and splitting its planetary disc into strange new shapes and multiple rings.

A new experiment placing bacteria on the outside of the International Space Station (ISS) has found that micro-organisms can survive in space for years, or even decades. The study lends weight to the idea that life could travel between planets.

For the first time, astronomers have used a machine learning algorithm – a form of self-teaching AI – to confirm the existence of 50 new exoplanets in data collected by the now retired Kepler space telescope.