Evidence is growing for a ninth planet lurking on the edges of the Solar System. Objects out there move in ways that suggest an unseen world is pulling on them, but new calculations suggest that there is no Planet Nine – these distant objects might just be jostling each other like bumper cars.
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As leftovers from the formation of the solar system, meteorites can act as time capsules. Scientists at the EPFL have now examined a piece of an asteroid known as 2008 TC3 and found diamonds that could only have come from a large, long-lost planet that roamed our neighborhood billions of years ago.
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As of January 2018, well over 3,500 exoplanets have been confirmed in the Milky Way, and it was basically a given that planets were pretty common across the universe. Now astrophysicists from the University of Oklahoma (OU) have confirmed the first detection of extragalactic exoplanets.
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You might have a pretty clear mental picture of what a planet is, but the official definition is surprisingly contentious. Now, an astrophysicist from Johns Hopkins University has proposed a revision to the definition of a planet, to help differentiate gas giants from brown dwarfs.
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When scanning for potentially habitable exoplanets, astronomers look for similar conditions to Earth. Tiny, turbulent pulsars aren’t usually given a second thought, but a new study has calculated that these neutron stars could indeed host habitable planets – under very specific circumstances.
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An international team of astronomers has discovered a temperate Earth-sized world with the potential to harbor alien life. The planet, known as Ross 128 b, is located a mere 11 light-years from Earth, and will one day become the closest exoplanet to our Sun.
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There are stories in the stars, so they say, and the story of Kronos is a doozy. Astronomers from Princeton noticed some marked chemical differences between the star and its binary partner, Krios, and determined the most likely cause: Kronos has devoured the equivalent of 15 Earths.
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Gemstones might not seem so valuable if they literally rained from the sky, but that's thought to be a common weather pattern on ice giant planets. Now scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have seen it in action here on Earth, by making it rain diamonds in the lab.
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A massive storm bigger than the Earth has been raging for centuries on Jupiter, and now Juno is swooping in for a closer look. It will come within a few thousand miles of the Great Red Spot, probing the storm to hopefully reveal some of its mysteries, and snap some stunning photos in the process.
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NASA is formulating plans to return to the ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune. The agency has conducted a study to determine the scientific focus of these potential missions, the kinds of instruments needed and the logistics of how the spacecraft would get there.
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