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planet

STUDY: Saturn’s Core Mighty Be Soupy (But Is It More Minestrone or Clam Chowder?)

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pea soup - pixabay

Saturn’s rings aren’t just a beautiful adornment — scientists can use the feature to understand what’s happening deep inside the planet. By using the famous rings like a seismograph, scientists studied processes in the planet’s interior and determined that its core must be “fuzzy.” Instead of a solid sphere like Earth’s, the core of Saturn appears to consist of a ‘soup’ of rocks, ice and metallic fluids that slosh around and affect the planet’s gravity. The new study used data from NASA’s Cassini mission, which orbited Saturn and its moons for 13 years between 2004 and 2017. In 2013, data … Read more

NASA Asked to Name Planet After Trans Artist

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SOPHIE-PLANET

SOPHIE died trying to watch the moon, so the trans community is trying to give her a planet. SOPHIE was trying to see the first full moon of the year when she fell from a ladder and tragically died in the early hours of 30 January. She was just 34. After the death of the artist, Christian Arroyo created a petition asking NASA to rename the planet TOI 1338 b in her honour. He explained how she was an influence for the young LGBTQ+ community. “SOPHIE was a highly influential singer, songwriter, and producer who was a great inspiration to … Read more

SPACE: Bizarre Planet Might Have Vaporized Rock for “Air”

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Red Planet - pixabay

Scientists think they have identified a lava world so dramatic that it might boast a thin regional atmosphere of vaporized rock where it is closest to its star. That exoplanet is called K2-141b and was originally discovered in 2017. The world is about half again as big as Earth but orbits so close to its star, which is one class smaller than our own, that it completes several loops each Earth-day with the same surface permanently facing the star. Now, scientists predict those factors mean that two-thirds of the surface of K2-141b is permanently sunlit — so much so that … Read more

SPACE: Behold The Rarest of Planets

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Thee Sun Planet

Perched on the tip of Orion’s nose, there spins a solar system that could give Tatooine — Luke Skywalker’s twin-sunned homeworld — a run for its money. Known as GW Orionis (or GW Ori) and located about 1,300 light-years from Earth, the system is a rare example of a triple-star solar system, with two suns orbiting one another at the center, and a third star swirling around its siblings from several hundred million miles away. Scientists previously identified the system by its three bright rings of planet-forming dust, nested inside one another like a massive orange bullseye in the sky. … Read more

SPACE: The Planet That Wasn’t

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NASA Fomalhaut-b

In 2014, a planet disappeared from the night sky. The distant world — known as Fomalhaut b and located a neighborly 25 light-years from Earth — was infamous for being one of the first exoplanets ever discovered in visible light by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope; when astronomers first caught sight of it in 2004 and 2006, the planet appeared as a bright, cool dot moving briskly across the sky. Ten years later, that dot had vanished. What happened to Fomalhaut b? Did the world have a falling out with its guardian sun (named simply Fomalhaut) and drift away? Did the … Read more

SPACE: Earth-Like Planet Found “Nearby”

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Earthlike Planet - NASA

A few months ago, a group of NASA exoplanet astronomers, who are in the business of discovering planets around other stars, called me into a secret meeting to tell me about a planet that had captured their interest. Because my expertise lies in modeling the climate of exoplanets, they asked me to figure out whether this new planet was habitable — a place where liquid water might exist. These NASA colleagues, Josh Schlieder and his students Emily Gilbert, Tom Barclay and Elisa Quintana, had been studying data from TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) when they discovered what may be TESS’ … Read more

SPACE: Did Earth Eat Another Planet?

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The ancient collision that formed the moon may also have brought with it all the ingredients needed for life, a new study finds. Over 4.4 billion years ago, a Mars-size body smashed into a primitive Earth, launching our moon into permanent orbit around our planet. But a new study finds that this event could have had a much larger impact than previously thought. The collision could also have imbued our planet with the carbon, nitrogen and sulfur needed for life to form, scientists reported today (Jan. 23) in the journal Science Advances. Back then, Earth was a little like Mars … Read more

SPACE: Closest Exoplanet to Earth Could Be ‘Highly Habitable’

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Proxima Centauri b - NASA

Just a cosmic hop, skip and jump away, an Earth-size planet orbits the closest star to our sun, Proxima Centauri. Ever since the discovery of the exoplanet — known as Proxima Centauri b— in 2016, people have wondered whether it could be capable of sustaining life. Now, using computer models similar to those used to study climate change on Earth, researchers have found that, under a wide range of conditions, Proxima Centauri b can sustain enormous areas of liquid water on its surface, potentially raising its prospects for harboring living organisms. “The major message from our simulations is that there’s … Read more

SPACE: Are We Missing a Planet?

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planet - pixabay

An asteroid that slammed into the Sudan desert on Oct. 7, 2008, shot out lots of little space rocks holding a precious secret: diamonds that likely formed billions of years ago inside the embryo of a now-decimated planet. That lost planet was the size of Mercury or perhaps Mars, researchers now say. In the space rocks, which are also called meteorites, researchers found compounds common to diamonds on Earth, such as chromite, phosphate and iron-nickel sulfides. It’s the first time these diamond components have been found in an extraterrestrial body, the researchers said in a new study describing the findings. … Read more