A detailed analysis of the first three years of data from NASA’s Kepler mission, which already has discovered thousands of potential exoplanets, contains good news for those searching for habitable worlds outside our solar system. The findings, presented today at a session during the American Astronomical Society meeting, were compiled by a team of astronomers […]
An abundance of radioactive elements observed in a number of distant solar systems would make the constituent planets much warmer, say scientists who contend that this planetary inner-heat could significantly expand the so-called Goldilocks zone around stars where life could evolve. The preliminary findings, by geologists and astronomers at Ohio State University, were presented this […]
Scientists say data transmitted by the Messenger spacecraft provide compelling support for the notion that Mercury harbors abundant water ice and other frozen volatile materials in its permanently shadowed polar craters. Given its proximity to the Sun, the existence of frozen water is counter-intuitive, but the tilt of Mercury’s rotational axis is almost zero, meaning […]
Astronomers say they have identified an astronomical body that is very probably a nomad planet – a free-floating planet that wanders through space without a parent star. Nomad planets are thought to form either as normal planets that have been kicked out of their home systems, or as lone objects like the smallest stars or […]
New research suggests that the size of an asteroid belt – and its proximity to a giant Jupiter-like planet – needs to be just right for life to evolve in a planetary system. The new theory, developed by NASA’s Rebecca Martin and Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute, indicates that solar systems with […]
Astronomers have suggested that the dark matter halos that envelop entire galaxies may not be completely dark after all, and could contain rogue stars that have been flung out of the galaxy. The case for dark matter not being quite so dark is made by astronomers in the current issue of the journal Nature. Central […]
Astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have discovered a rocky planet about the same mass as Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system – the closest star system to Earth. Details of the discovery appear in the journal Nature. Alpha Centauri is one of the brightest objects in the southern sky and […]
Astronomers using the ALMA telescope in Chile have observed an unusual spiral structure in the gas surrounding the red giant star R Sculptoris. “We’ve seen shells around this kind of star before, but this is the first time we’ve ever seen a spiral of material coming out from a star, together with a surrounding shell,” […]
A mysterious bright object lying on the Martian surface has delayed the Curiosity rover’s soil sampling activities until mission control can identify the object. NASA said Curiosity’s first scooping activity appeared to go well but the rover team decided to refrain from using the rover’s robotic arm any further due to concerns the object on […]
A 1,000 year-old Buddhist statue discovered by a Nazi expedition to Tibet in 1938 has been analyzed by scientists and found to be carved from a rare ataxite meteorite. Details of how the provenance of the relic was established have been published in Meteoritics and Planetary Science. The statue, known as the Iron Man, weighs […]
