Fully understanding how a rocky planet becomes habitable and remains so is a fundamental challenge for planetary scientists and astrobiologists, given...
With more than 5,500 detected exoplanets, the search for life is entering a new era. Using life on Earth as a guide, astrobiologists from Cornell University...
Planetary scientists have long speculated about the potential habitability of Venus, not at its hot surface, but in the cloud layers located at 48-60 km...
In a new study, astronomers from Yale University and MIT examined the joint spin-orbit and orbit-orbit distribution for exoplanets residing in binary and...
The history of water on Mars is a puzzle that is of interest to planetary scientists as well as the general public. The Red Planet currently has water...
Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers have discovered and characterized a habitable zone planet orbiting the...
Planets too close to their star are too hot (such as Venus), those too far, are too cold (like Mars), whereas planets in the habitable zone are just right....
Enceladus, the sixth-biggest moon of Saturn, presents a remarkable opportunity in our Solar System for searching for evidence of extraterrestrial life,...
Using data from NASA’s Cassini mission, planetary scientists have detected several compounds of strong importance to the habitability of Saturn’s icy...
Astronomers from NASA and the University of Washington have estimated total internal heating rates and depths to possible subsurface oceans for 17 planets...
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences, researchers at the University of Cambridge...
In the search for life in the Universe, Earth provides a template of evolution for the one habitable planet we know. Earth’s atmospheric composition...
Using data from the Jovian InfraRed Auroral Mapper (JIRAM) aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft, planetary scientists have detected hydrated sodium chloride,...
Two new papers in the Astronomical Journal show that in some multiplanet systems, giant planets tend to kick their smaller neighbors out of orbit and wreak...
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have discovered carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere of the habitable zone exoplanet...
A process called photoevaporation is a potential explanation for several features within exoplanet demographics. Atmospheric escape observed in young Neptune-sized...
Venus and Earth provide astonishingly different views of the evolution of a rocky planet, raising the question of why these two rocky worlds evolved so...
Plate tectonics is a fundamental factor in the sustained habitability of Earth, but its time of onset is unknown, with ages ranging from the Hadean to...
A team of U.S. astronomers has discovered that two-thirds of the planets around M dwarfs (red dwarf stars) could be roasted by extreme tidal forces, sterilizing...
