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Researchers discover 45 potentially habitable exoplanets

November 09, 2020 -

With several active and planned sky surveys, the researchers said that their findings could be used to refine exoplanet searches.45 Exoplanets possess Earth-like characteristics

Detecting habitable exoplanets is not easy; scientists can’t just send a probe to distant stars using current spacefaring technologies. For instance, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Juno probe reaches speeds of up to 165,000 miles per hour. At those ...

Scientists identify 24 exoplanets that may be more habitable than Earth

October 07, 2020 -

Exoplanets, celestial bodies that orbit a star other than the sun, are found everywhere in the cosmos. Some of them are located in the orbital region around a star, called the liquid water habitable zone, where planets could have stable atmospheres to support liquid water.

The researchers surveyed around 4,500 such exoplanets that are registered in the Kepler Object of Interest Exoplanet Archive, choosing those that passed their criteria for habitability....

Space-time ripples could help scientists uncover exoplanets from other galaxies

August 15, 2020 - exoplanets orbiting them.

"Thanks to gravitational waves, we may finally be able to observe such objects far away from the solar neighborhood," said co-author Camilla Danielski of the University College London. The findings of the study are published in the International Journal of Modern Physics.Gravitational waves and how they are detected

In 1916, Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in his theory of general relativity. He posited ...

Experts: More than 100 giant exoplanets may have potentially life-hosting moons

August 08, 2018 -

Earth-like exoplanets hog the spotlight for obvious reasons. Many experts continue to hold out for finding another rocky world in the habitable zone of its primary star, that sweet spot where life-giving liquid water could exist on the face of the planet.

For just as obvious reasons, Jupiter-like gas giants were generally ignored. A planet that is mostly made up of pressurized gas cannot have that much liquid water on the surface of its core.

However, ...

NASA: At least 300 million exoplanets in the Milky Way may be habitable

November 12, 2020 -

The estimate is based on a conservative assumption that seven percent of the sun-like stars in the galaxy foster conditions that are hospitable to life. The researchers said that there might be more such stars and therefore more habitable planets.

The findings of the study are slated to be published in the Astronomical Journal.Looking for habitable exoplanets in the Milky Way

The study’s findings were based on data gathered by the Kepler space telescope....

New computer models suggest life on the nearest exoplanets may already be thriving

September 22, 2019 -

These planets lie well within the habitable zone of stars like Proxima Centauri, Ross-128, and TRAPPIST-1. When they got discovered, they triggered excitement over the chances of hosting biological life.

Unfortunately, bad news followed the good tidings. The newly discovered exoplanets bathed in potentially lethal amounts of radiation from their parent stars.

One example is the exoplanet Proxima Centauri b. It orbits Proxima Centauri, the closest stellar ...

Do the rules of environmental protection extend to exoplanets beyond our solar system?

June 22, 2019 -

Existing environmental regulations apply to the planets within our solar system. Furthermore, extraterrestrial lifeforms only merit protection if it is possible to investigate them.

There are many exoplanets throughout the Milky Way galaxy. The atmospheres of many of these worlds contain sufficient amounts of oxygen to support terrestrial life, such as human beings. However, most of the alien planets lack any form of life on their surface.

Goethe University ...

Cradles of life? New research says oceans on exoplanets may harbor more life than Earth

August 24, 2020 -

Scientists traditionally detect which exoplanet is potentially habitable by looking for conditions that closely mimic those on Earth. However, exoplanets that greatly vary from the Earth in terms of conditions such as ocean salinity may, in fact, be more primed to host life.

“A further implication is that Earth might not be optimally habitable – and life elsewhere may enjoy a planet that is even more hospitable than our own,” said geoscientist and co-author Stephanie ...

NASA’s alien-hunting probe discovers 100 new planets orbiting stars outside our solar system

March 03, 2018 -

Currently on its ninth year of operation, Kepler has identified thousands of potential exoplanets. It is currently embarked on the K2 mission, a search for habitable planet around red dwarf stars.

The research group connected with the mission was headed by Andrew Mayo, a member of the National Space Institute at the Technical University of Denmark. In an interview with Gizmodo, Dr. Mayo explained that his team's discoveries will help astronomers learn more about ...

Other planets may be home to more diverse life forms than Earth, suggest scientists

August 27, 2020 -

Stephanie Olson, an astrobiologist from the University of Chicago, presented these findings at the 2019 Goldschmidt Conference in Barcelona, Spain. The idea that other planets could be more habitable than Earth might seem far-fetched, but it could help inform astronomers' search for life on other planets, said Olson.

Olson and her colleagues used a climate model from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to simulate possible atmospheric and oceanic ...

New model suggests several planets in the universe might have water-rich atmospheres

March 23, 2021 - exoplanets might even maintain those atmospheres for billions of years, just as Earth's atmosphere has persisted.

Their findings, published on Monday, March 15, in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, expand experts' grasp of how planets form and may even guide astronomers in the ongoing search for Earth-like planets beyond the Solar System.Universe might be brimming with water vapor worlds

Because of the 2009 Kepler space mission, scientists know the universe ...

Scientists discover over 1,000 stars where E.T. can observe Earth

October 29, 2020 -

In a study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the researchers said that these stars are in a direct line of sight to the planet. This means that when the Earth transits the Sun at a certain point around in its orbit, advanced alien species in one of those star systems could potentially detect chemical traces of Earthly life.Stars in zones perfect for spotting Earth

Astronomers typically look for exoplanets – planets that orbit ...

NASA will find alien life in the next 25 years, experts predict

June 07, 2023 - exoplanets beyond the solar system, which is the first-ever observation of this kind. This is due to JWST being able to examine molecules in the atmosphere of remote worlds and recognize those vital for life.NASA already building more powerful space telescope to search for life

Building off of the dramatic successes of the JWST, NASA is already working on its multibillion-dollar successor, which is set to search for life on Earth-like planets as soon as the early 2040s, ...

Newly discovered exoplanet appears to have nuclear fusion taking place in its core

January 25, 2023 - exoplanets, as ours may be the first direct detection of a 'Gaia exoplanet,'" said Hinkley. "[This] is also very significant because it shows that we can now directly characterize the atmospheres of these exoplanets, where we know from previous studies that they most commonly reside at roughly two to four times our Earth/sun distance."HD 206893 c may be a planet or brown dwarf star

The star HD 206893, which is almost 30 percent bigger than the sun, is located ...

Earth-like planets not as rare as once thought: Astronomers estimate there are 2,000 nearby stars that house them

August 04, 2019 -

NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has targeted the stellar candidates. The successor to the retired Kepler space observatory, it's looking for the signs of a transiting exoplanet in 400,000 stars.

Researchers from Cornell University, Vanderbilt University, and Lehigh University have supported an effort to identify the most viable targets in TESS's catalog of stars with exoplanets in the habitable zone. Cornell researcher Lisa Kaltenegger served ...

European governments launch project to confirm presence of alien life

July 03, 2017 - exoplanets and their host stars," said Professor Laurent Gizon, director of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany.

“The launch of PLATO will no doubt facilitate us with a golden opportunity to have a say in some of the most remarkable discoveries of the next decade. It will help us answer the primary questions about the existence of the world, its formation, and twin-stars, and will eventually lead us to the finding of extraterrestrial ...

Astronomers unveil first direct image of young exoplanet just 63 light-years away

October 15, 2020 - exoplanets were discovered through indirect means. For instance, scientists look at "wobble" data to see whether a potential exoplanet exerts a gravitational tug on a star.

Stars don't sit stationary while planets revolve around them. Along with all the planets "in their orbit," they orbit a common center of mass known as the barycenter. The barycenter is closest to the object with the most mass, which is why the sun, with its pummeling largeness, is commonly thought ...

This distant planet lost its atmosphere, so its volcanoes made it a new one

May 04, 2021 - exoplanets in outer space were once shrouded in thick clouds of hydrogen similar to those found in the atmospheres of gas giants like Neptune and Uranus. Exoplanets usually orbit stars. When those stars explode, the blast may blow away hydrogen in the atmosphere.

The result is sometimes dramatic, so much so that a previously gassy planet could quickly become a bare world approximately the same size as the Earth. "How many terrestrial planets don't begin as ...

Astronomers say “technosignatures” can be used to find advanced alien civilizations

November 02, 2020 - exoplanets. They’re now working to understand if this technique will allow them to detect city lights on a planet’s surface.

NASA is also engaged in its own efforts to detect technosignatures. The agency recently awarded a grant to a new search for extraterrestrial intelligence that involves studying atmospheric technosignatures. The researchers will focus on artificial gases that are likely produced by an advanced alien species. Once completed, the study may help ...

The search for intelligent alien life gets a boost from the world’s biggest radio telescope

October 10, 2020 - exoplanets orbiting in the potentially habitable zone and modulated radio signals that were not detected in previous SETI efforts.

The Andromeda galaxy, located around 2.5 million light-years from Earth, is ripe for study as the signals coming out of it have been ignored in previous SETI efforts, according to co-author Vishal Gajjar, a research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, who’s part of the Breakthrough Listen Initiative. This is because signals ...