Three billion years ago, Earth's life relied on a rare metal
A collaborative team of scientists has discovered that life on Earth over three billion years ago relied on the metal molybdenum, which was incredibly scarce in the environment at the time. The study, published in Nature Communications, is the first to show that molybdenum was used by ancient life this far back in our planet's history.
JWST pins down the origins of a planetary odd couple
Across the Milky Way galaxy, a planetary odd couple is circling a star some 190 light years from Earth. A normally "lonely" hot Jupiter is sharing space with a mini-Neptune, in a rare and unlikely pairing that's had astronomers puzzled since the system's discovery in 2020.
Close-in planets act as 'bouncers' to create rogue worlds
Rogue planets sound like rare travelers among the stars, freed from the gravitational constraints of a host system, left to forever wander the interstellar void. But modern models suggest these free floating planets (FFPs) as they are technically known, are actually very common—19 times more common than planets beyond the "snow line," which is the distance from the central star where it becomes cold enough that hydrogen compounds like water, ammonia, and methane can condense into ice.
Astronomers explore the surface composition of a nearby super-Earth
Using MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) on board the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a team of researchers led by former MPIA (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany) Ph.D. student Sebastian Zieba (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, Cambridge, U.S.) and Laura Kreidberg, MPIA Director and study PI (principal investigator), analyzed the surface composition of the rocky exoplanet LHS 3844 b.
Scientists discover 27 potential new planets that orbit two stars in solar systems far, far away
On ‘Star Wars day’, researchers more than double the number of potential known ‘circumbinary’ planets like the fictional Tatooine, home to Luke Skywalker
Near-relativistic swarm could image Proxima b at 20-meter resolution and scan for biosignatures, paper says
Laser sail propulsion is an idea that won't go away. By aiming powerful Earth-based lasers at tiny spacecraft with light sails, tiny spacecraft can be accelerated to near-relativistic speeds without carrying fuel or an energy source, and without carrying any kind of propulsion system at all. There are clear advantages to this idea, if it can be implemented.
The most common planets in the galaxy don't appear around the most common stars, TESS observations suggest
Astronomers now estimate there is at least one planet for every star in our galaxy. These worlds, called exoplanets, are planets that orbit stars outside our solar system. But new research from McMaster University reveals a surprising twist: the most common planets in our galaxy don't exist around the most common stars.
Two suns are better than one—planets thrive around binary stars
Planets may actually form more easily around double stars than around single stars like our sun, according to new research from astrophysicists at the University of Lancashire. Binary stars are common in our galaxy, yet for a long time astronomers believed that the gravitational tug-of-war between two stars would make it harder for circumbinary planets, worlds that orbit both stars, to form. Famous fictional worlds such as Tatooine from Star Wars, with its iconic twin sunsets, were thought to be cosmic curiosities rather than something nature routinely produces.
JWST hunts for an 'Earth-moon' twin in a habitable zone, but the star has other plans
The moon has played a huge role in the development of Earth. It stabilizes the planet, tempers dramatic climate swings, and possibly even provides the tidal heating that might have led to the first life forms. So it's natural we would want to find a similar Earth/Luna system somewhere else in the cosmos. But astronomers have been searching for one for years at this point to no avail. And a new paper, available on the arXiv preprint server, from Emily Pass and her colleagues at MIT, Harvard, and the University of Chicago describes using the James Webb Space Telescope to track some of the most promising exomoon candidates—only to be foiled by the star they were orbiting.
Stellar flares may expand habitable zones around small stars
The search for life beyond Earth has traditionally focused on exoplanets orbiting sun-like stars, which is a G-type star. However, low-mass stars, which are designated as K-type and M-type stars, have rapidly become a target for astrobiology, primarily due to their much longer lifetimes. This also means the habitable zone (HZ), which is the distance from a star where liquid water could exist, is much smaller than our solar system's HZ, and is referred to as the liquid water habitable zone (LW-HZ). In contrast, another type of HZ that involves a star's ultraviolet (UV) radiation potentially enabling life-harboring conditions is known as UV-HZ.
K.Llewellin 