Space & Physics
Just Another Cloudy Morning on a Hot Exoplanet
Astronomers use Kepler telescope to study weather on Jupiter-size planets beyond our solar system
"kepler"
Will We Find Extraterrestrial Life In 2015?
Probably not, but just possibly yes. One of the reasons that the search for life elsewhere in the universe is so exciting is that it would take only one chance discovery, one lucky break, for all the walls to come tumbling down...
Space & Physics
The Top Ten Space and Physics Stories of 2014
From humanity’s first, flawed foray to the surface of a comet to the celebrated discovery of (and less celebrated skepticism about) primordial gravitational waves, 2014 has brought some historic successes and failures in space science and physics...
Space & Physics
Exoplanet Size: It’s Elementary
Since quite early in the history of the discovery of planets around other stars it’s been apparent that the likelihood of certain types of planets around a star is related to the abundance of heavy elements in that system...
Busted Exoplanet-Hunting Kepler Space Telescope Gets a New Mission
Kepler will rely on solar radiation pressure to balance its compromised pointing ability in order to make observations of targets in the plane of Earth's orbit
Space & Physics
White Dwarf Acts as Cosmic Magnifying Glass
A planet-hunting telescope has observed long-predicted gravitational lensing of a star in a binary system by its companion
Space & Physics
Twin Earth May Be Better than Earth for Life
Pseudo-Earths are out there. That's the message of today's exciting announcement that a planet about the same size as Earth lives in its star's habitable zone--the temperate region around a star where liquid water might flow...
So You Want To Be An Exozookeeper?
This week has seen the release of the latest set of ‘confirmed’ exoplanets from NASA’s Kepler mission.
Evolution
Summer Astrobiology Roundup #3: The Ripening Of The Planets
Although NASA’s planet hunting mission Kepler seems unlikely to return to a fully functioning state, after another reaction wheel failure, it has already yielded an extraordinary crop of new worlds...
