In 1950, while working at Los Alamos National Laboratory, renowned physicist Enrico Fermi was lunching with colleagues including Edward Teller, Herbert York an Emil Konopinski. The group talked and laughed about a spate of recent UFO reports during the meal, as well as a cartoon about who might be stealing garbage can tops. Was it …
A Four Planet System in Orbit, Directly Imaged and Remarkable
Now on Facebook: http://facebook.com/nexssmanyworlds/ The era of directly imaging exoplanets has only just begun, but the science and viewing pleasures to come are appealingly apparent. This evocative movie of four planets more massive than Jupiter orbiting the young star HR 8799 is a composite of sorts, including images taken over seven years at the W.M. …
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The Stellar Side of The Exoplanet Story
When it comes to the study of exoplanets, it's common knowledge that the host stars don't get much respect. Yes, everyone knows that there wouldn't be exoplanets without stars, and that they serve as the essential background for exoplanet transit observations and as the wobbling object that allows for radial velocity measurements that lead …
Waiting on Enceladus
Of all the possible life-beyond-Earth questions hanging fire, few are quite so intriguing as those surrounding the now famous plumes of the moon Enceladus: what telltale molecules are in the constantly escaping jets of water vapor, and what dynamics inside the moon are pushing them out? Seldom, if ever before, have scientists been given such …
One Planet, But Many Different Earths
We all know that life has not been found so far on any planet beyond Earth -- at least not yet. This lack of discovery of extraterrestrial life has long been used as a knock on the field of astrobiology and has sometimes been put forward as a measure of Earth's uniqueness. But the more …
Out Of The Darkness
Before there were planets in our solar system, there was a star that would become our sun. Before there was a sun, there were older stars and exoplanets throughout the galaxies. Before there were galaxies with stars and exoplanets, there were galaxies with stars and no planets. Before there were galaxies without planets, there were …
Found: Our Nearest Exoplanet Neighbor
No exoplanet can possibly be closer to us than the one just detected around our nearest stellar neighbor, Proxima Centauri. The long-sought and long-imagined planet is larger than Earth, but small enough to be rocky as opposed to a gas or ice giant. Making things even more exciting, the planet was detected inside the habitable …
Earth: A Prematurely Inhabited Planet?
The study of the formation and logic of the universe (cosmology) and the study of exoplanets and their conduciveness to life do not seem to intersect much. Scientists in one field focus on the deep physics of the cosmos while the others search for the billions upon billions of planets out there and seek to …
Coming to Terms With Biosignatures
The search for life beyond our solar system has focused largely on the detection of an ever-increasing number of exoplanets, determinations of whether the planets are in a habitable zone, and what the atmospheres of those planets might look like. It is a sign of how far the field has progressed that scientists are now …
Three Star Ballet, With Exoplanet
It hardly seems possible, but researchers have detected a planet in apparently stable orbit within a three star system -- a configuration now known as a trinary. The ubiquity of binary stars has been understood for some time, and the presence of exoplanets orbiting around and within them is no longer a surprise. But this …
Many Worlds 