A protective atmosphere, a friendly Sun, and lots of liquid water — Earth is a special place. Using the unprecedented capabilities of the NASA/ESA/CSA...
This planet candidate, Alpha Centauri Ab, could be a gas giant, orbiting 1 to 2 times the distance between Sun and Earth, according to two papers to be...
Radiolysis induced by Galactic cosmic rays could provide a viable energy source for microbial metabolism in the subsurface environments of rocky planetary...
Named L 98-59f, this planet is a non-transiting super-Earth with a minimal mass of 2.8 Earth masses on a 23-day orbit inside the habitable zone of the...
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have detected the chemical fingerprints of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide...
White dwarfs may present amenable environments for life on planets formed within or migrated to their habitable zones, generating warmer surface environments...
One of these exoplanets, HD 20794d, is likely to be a rocky planet in the habitable zone of its parent star, the G-dwarf HD 20794.
This image shows the...
Planetary researcher Tereza Constantinou and her colleagues at the University of Cambridge have examined the chemical composition of the Venusian atmosphere...
Kepler-51 is a 500-million-year-old G-type star hosting four low density planets, according to a new paper published in the Astronomical Journal.
This...
On Earth, solar radiation can transmit down to multiple meters within ice, depending on its optical properties. Organisms within ice can harness energy...
An exoplanet at least half the mass of Venus orbits Barnard’s star, the closest single star to the Sun, once every 3.15 days.
An artist’s impression...
Fully understanding how a rocky planet becomes habitable and remains so is a fundamental challenge for planetary scientists and astrobiologists, given...
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...
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....
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences, researchers at the University of Cambridge...
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...
Seven rocky planets orbit the nearby dwarf star TRAPPIST-1, providing a unique opportunity to search for atmospheres on small planets outside the Solar...
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...
