planet

Is Pluto a planet? The Spanish government’s tax portal says it is

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Josie Ford Guess the planet Feedback has always been mildly sceptical of, not to say narked by, requests to click on pictures of bicycles and fire hydrants to prove we aren’t a robot. True, no one has ever seen an algorithm riding a bicycle, but when the shape-shifting terminator bots finally arrive, they will probably … Read more

Possible sign of Mars life? Curiosity rover finds ‘tantalizing’ Red Planet organics

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NASA’s Curiosity rover has found some interesting organic compounds on the Red Planet that could be signs of ancient Mars life, but it will take a lot more work to test that hypothesis. Some of the powdered rock samples that Curiosity has collected over the years contain organics rich in a type of carbon that … Read more

What really makes a planet habitable? Our assumptions may be wrong

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Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of “Ask a Spaceman” and “Space Radio,” and author of “How to Die in Space.” Sutter contributed this article to Space.com’s Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Remember Hoth, that ice-covered world from “The Empire Strikes Back”? Though some creatures eked … Read more

Scorching alien planet takes seasons to an extreme

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Scientists got a close look at an extreme case of seasons thanks to a retired NASA telescope. Researchers used NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to film a year on an exoplanet called XO-3b. Conveniently, a year on this world lasts only three Earth days. Within that time, the exoplanet experiences a one-day-long summer and a two-day-long … Read more

For The First Time, Astronomers Detect Rugby-Ball Shape of a Deformed Exoplanet

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Beyond the Solar System, out there in the wider galaxy, a very strange subset of exoplanets exists. Called hot Jupiters, these are majorly clingy – hugging so close to their host stars, they’re not just intensely hot, but also likely warped by gravitational forces.   Now, for the first time, astronomers have actually detected the … Read more

Astronomers Detect Water Vapor in The Atmosphere of a ‘Super Neptune’ Exoplanet

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New Year’s Day comes around once every 47.5 hours on the roughly Neptune-sized exoplanet TOI 674b, which makes it something of a rare creature.  In spite of years of hunting, surprisingly few middle-sized gas giants have ever been seen with orbits shorter than a few days in length, creating what astronomers refer to as a … Read more

Latest Study Finds No Trace of Aliens in 4-Billion-Year-Old Martian Meteorite

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To date, we’ve found over a hundred precious Mars rocks that have travelled from the red planet and landed on Earth at some point. Among those, specimen ALH84001 might well be one of the most enigmatic.   This meteorite fragment was picked up during a snowmobile ride in the ice field of Alan Hills in Antarctica … Read more

Exomoon around Jupiter-like planet possibly spotted by Kepler telescope

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A confident detection of a moon orbiting a planet beyond our solar system – called an exomoon – has eluded astronomers so far, but they have found a new candidate Space 13 January 2022 By Leah Crane The exomoon candidate may be orbiting a planet called Kepler-1708b Helena Valenzuela Widerström Astronomers have spotted signs of … Read more