EXTRA SOLAR

2,688 articles

Rogue planet mass pinned down for the first time
Jan 06, 2026 (SPX)
Over the last decade, astronomers have identified about a dozen rogue planet candidates through brief microlensing events, when a compact object passes in front...
Joint ground- and space-based observations reveal Saturn-mass rogue planet
Jan 03, 2026 (SPX)
Although studies to date have only revealed a handful of such free-floating planets, detections are expected to increase in the coming years, particularly with ...
Philosopher argues AI consciousness may remain unknowable
Jan 01, 2026 (SPX)
McClelland distinguishes between consciousness in general and sentience, the form of consciousness that involves positive and negative experiences such as pleas...
Deep Arctic gas hydrate mounds host ultra deep cold seep ecosystem
Jan 01, 2026 (SPX)
The Freya Hydrate Mounds host active methane seepage, crude oil emissions, and chemosynthetic communities adapted to hydrocarbon-rich fluids at hadal depths. Th...
Hubble pinpoints asteroid smash ups in nearby Fomalhaut system
Jan 01, 2026 (SPX)
"This is certainly the first time I've ever seen a point of light appear out of nowhere in an exoplanetary system," said principal investigator Paul Kalas of th...
Evolution study finds history and environment shifts can steer species in very different directions
Dec 18, 2025 (SPX)
Working with UVM computer scientist Lapo Frati and colleagues at the University of Vermont and the University of Cambridge, Petak helped design a computational ...
Webb maps carbon rich atmosphere on distorted pulsar planet
Dec 17, 2025 (SPX)
Lead author Michael Zhang of the University of Chicago described the host as "a star that's completely bizarre - the mass of the Sun, but the size of a city," n...
Can scientists detect life without knowing what it looks like
Dec 16, 2025 (SPX)
Dust and rock collected from the asteroid Bennu contained many of life's building blocks, including all five nucleobases used in DNA and RNA, 14 of the 20 amino...
Clues to the migration path of hot Jupiters in their orbits
Dec 16, 2025 (SPX)
Observationally, separating these mechanisms has been difficult. In the high-eccentricity case, gravitational interactions can tilt the planet's orbit relative ...
Ultra hot super Earth shows dense atmosphere over magma ocean
Dec 14, 2025 (SPX)
TOI-561 b has about twice Earths mass but orbits its star at roughly one fortieth of Mercurys distance from the Sun, completing a year in just 10.56 hours with ...
Hidden circumbinary giant planet emerges from decade old Gemini data
Dec 14, 2025 (SPX)
The newly confirmed world, designated HD 143811 AB b, is about six times the mass of Jupiter and lies roughly 446 light years from Earth. Its age is estimated a...
RISTRETTO spectrograph cleared for Proxima b atmospheric hunt
Dec 09, 2025 (SPX)
Large distances between stars make it difficult for astronomers to resolve exoplanets as distinct sources from their host stars. Only a small number of planetar...
The bacteria that wont wake up found in spacecraft cleanrooms
Dec 09, 2025 (SPX)
The team found that Tersicoccus phoenicis can depress its metabolism so strongly that standard methods for detecting living cells register it as inactive even a...
NASA backs WHOI effort to read organic signals from ocean worlds
Dec 08, 2025 (SPX)
The Investigating Ocean Worlds project, or InvOW, will focus on improving how future missions interpret measurements of carbon-rich molecules that could indicat...
TRAPPIST 1 flares mapped to probe planetary habitability
Dec 05, 2025 (SPX)
A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder used NASAs James Webb Space Telescope together with detailed computer simulations to study how these flares ari...
Methane hint on TRAPPIST 1e seen as likely stellar noise not proof of an atmosphere
Dec 05, 2025 (SPX)
The TRAPPIST-1 system, discovered by the Transiting Planets and Planetesimals Small Telescope project, lies about 39 to 40 light-years from Earth and consists o...
Subaru OASIS survey uncovers massive planet and brown dwarf
Dec 05, 2025 (SPX)
Current instruments can directly image massive planets and brown dwarfs around only about 1% of stars, even in young systems where newly formed companions still...
Supernova mixing traced as source of key life elements
Dec 05, 2025 (SPX)
Chlorine and potassium are odd-Z elements, each with an odd number of protons, and they play important roles in both planet formation and biological processes. ...
Helium escape mapped from superpuff exoplanet WASP 107b by JWST
Dec 03, 2025 (SPX)
Atmospheric escape describes the loss of gas from a planet's upper atmosphere into space and operates on Earth at a rate of just over 3 kilograms per second, ma...
SPHERE debris disk survey maps hidden asteroid and comet belts in young planetary systems
Dec 03, 2025 (SPX)
In the solar system, objects between about a kilometer and a few hundred kilometers across occupy distinct populations such as asteroids and comets, which are t...
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