Extrasolar Planets News
March 7, 2017
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March 7, 2017

Astronomer Searches for Signs of Life on Wolf 1061 Exoplanet

Jan. 19, 2017 — Astronomers have located the habitable zone, the region where water could exist on the surface of a planet, on the Wolf 1061, a planetary system that's 14 light years ... read more

Searching for Planets in the Alpha Centauri System

Jan. 12, 2017 — Astronomers are conducting a search for planets in the nearby star system Alpha Centauri. Such planets could be the targets for an eventual launch of miniature space probes by the Breakthrough ... read more

Our Galaxy's Black Hole Is Spewing out Planet-Size 'Spitballs'

Jan. 11, 2017 — Every few thousand years, an unlucky star wanders too close to the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. The black hole's powerful gravity rips the star apart, sending a long streamer of ... read more

Hubble Detects 'Exocomets' Taking the Plunge Into a Young Star

Jan. 6, 2017 — Interstellar forecast for a nearby star: Raining comets! NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered comets plunging onto the star HD 172555, which is a youthful 23 million years old and ... read more

Searching a Sea of 'Noise' to Find Exoplanets, Using Only Data as a Guide

Dec. 20, 2016 — Researchers have found a data-driven way to detect distant planets and refine the search for worlds similar to Earth. The new approach relies on mathematical methods that have their foundations in ... read more

Astronomers Discover Dark Past of Planet-Eating 'Death Star'

Dec. 15, 2016 — Scientists have made the rare discovery of a planetary system with a host star similar to Earth's sun. Especially intriguing is the star's unusual composition, which indicates it ingested ... read more

Microlensing Study Suggests Most Common Outer Planets Likely Neptune-Mass

Dec. 15, 2016 — A new statistical study of planets found by a technique called gravitational microlensing suggests that Neptune-mass worlds are likely the most common type of planet to form in the icy outer realms ... read more

Winds of Rubies and Sapphires Strike the Sky of Giant Planet

Dec. 12, 2016 — Signs of powerful changing winds have been detected on a planet 16 times larger than Earth, over 1,000 light years away -- the first time ever that weather systems have been found on a gas giant ... read more

ALMA Finds Compelling Evidence for Pair of Infant Planets Around Young Star

Dec. 12, 2016 — New ALMA observations contain compelling evidence that two newborn planets, each about the size of Saturn, are in orbit around a young star known as HD 163296. These planets, which are not yet fully ... read more

Will Earth Still Exist 5 Billion Years from Now?

Dec. 8, 2016 — What will happen to Earth when, in a few billion years' time, the sun is a hundred times bigger than it is today? Using the most powerful radio telescope in the world, an international team of ... read more

Timing the Shadow of a Potentially Habitable Extrasolar Planet Paves the Way to Search for Alien Life

Nov. 28, 2016 — Scientists have observed the transit of a potentially Earth-like extrasolar planet known as K2-3d. A transit is a phenomenon in which a planet passes in front of its parent star, blocking a small ... read more

Scientists Discover a Nearby 'Super-Earth'

Nov. 16, 2016 — Researchers have discovered a "super-Earth" type planet, GJ 536 b, whose mass is around 5.4 Earth masses, in orbit around a nearby very bright star. The exoplanet is not within the ... read more

Sculpting Solar Systems: Instrument Reveals Protoplanetary Discs Being Shaped by Newborn Planets

Nov. 9, 2016 — Three teams of astronomers have made use of SPHERE, an advanced exoplanet-hunting instrument on the Very Large Telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory, in order to shed light on the enigmatic ... read more

Mystery Solved Behind Birth of Saturn’s Rings

Oct. 31, 2016 — A team of researchers has presented a new model for the origin of Saturn's rings based on results of computer simulations. The results of the simulations are also applicable to rings of other ... read more

Preferentially Earth-Sized Planets With Lots of Water

Oct. 24, 2016 — Computer simulations by astrophysicists of the formation of planets orbiting in the habitable zone of low mass stars such as Proxima Centauri show that these planets are most likely to be roughly the ... read more

Oldest Known Planet-Forming Disk Discovered

Oct. 21, 2016 — A group of citizen scientists and professional astronomers joined forces to discover an unusual hunting ground for exoplanets. They found a star surrounded by the oldest known circumstellar disk -- a ... read more

More Evidence for Ninth Planet Roming Solar System's Outer Fringes

Oct. 19, 2016 — As the search for a hypothetical, unseen planet far, far beyond Neptune's orbit continues, new research provides additional support for the possible existence of such a world and narrows the ... read more

Curious Tilt of the Sun Traced to Undiscovered Planet

Oct. 19, 2016 — Planet Nine the undiscovered planet at the edge of the solar system appears to be responsible for the unusual tilt of the Sun, according to a new ... read more

First Pluto, Now This: Discovery of First Binary-Binary Calls Solar System Formation Into Question

Oct. 19, 2016 — Everything we know about the formation of solar systems might be wrong, says two astronomers. They've discovered the first "binary--binary" -- two massive companions around one star in ... read more

Possible Formation Site of Icy Giant Planet Spotted

Oct. 14, 2016 — A number of extrasolar planets have been found in the past two decades and now researchers agree that planets can have a wide variety of characteristics. However, it is still unclear how this ... read more
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