In our Earthling minds, planets exist in solar systems with a Sun in the middle and objects large and small orbiting around it. This is hardly surprising since planets are pretty much exclusively illustrated in solar systems and, until the onset of the 21st century, no other kind of planet had been identified. That changed …
The Evolving Science of Technosignatures
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) began decades ago as an effort to pick up radio signals from distant civilizations. The effort was centered at the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia and was by today's standards quite rudimentary. A much broader search for distant radio signals remains very much at the core of SETI …
Webb Telescope Finds No Signs of a Thick Atmosphere Around a Second TRAPPIST-1 Planet
Among the most eagerly awaited results from the early observations of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is whether or not the seven rocky planets of the TRAPPIST-1 system have atmospheres. The TRAPPIST-1 planets are close to us (40 light-years away), are all solid rather than gaseous, and they orbit a cool and small sun …
The Makeup of Red Dwarf Solar Systems May Seriously Limit the Formation of Habitable Planets
Jupiter is often described as the "big brother" planet of our solar system that made the formation and evolution of Earth possible. In the early days of the solar system, massive Jupiter helped the planet grow rapidly while serving as a gravity well that shielded the planet from the most violent planetesimal, asteroid and debris …
Destination: Europa
"ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS – EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE." These are the words broadcast by the computer HAL as recounted in Arthur C. Clarke's book "2010: Odyssey Two," the sequel to the iconic "2001: A Space Odyssey." The message had been delivered to the computer by the non-corporeal David Bowman (the focus …
Pam Conrad: The NASA Astrobiologist Who Also Became a Minister
Science and religion so often seem to be in conflict, with the chasm between them widening all the time. For many, the grounding of their religion is in faith and belief in powers beyond our understanding. For people of science, the grounding is in empirical facts and measurements that can be tested to help explain …
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What the JWST is Learning About Exoplanet Atmospheres
The James Webb Space Telescope is beginning to reveal previously unknowable facts about the composition of exoplanets -- about the presence or absence of atmospheres around the exoplanets and the makeup of any atmospheres that are detected. The results have been coming in for some months and they are a delight to scientists. And as …
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What Would Happen If Our Solar System Had a Super-Earth Like Many Others? Chaos.
Before astronomers began to find planets -- many, many planets -- orbiting Suns other than ours, the scientific consensus was that if other solar systems were ever found they would probably look much like ours. That would mean small, rocky planets closest to the Sun and large gaseous planets further out. That assumption crash and …
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A Scientific Bonanza From Asteroid Ryugu and Hayabusa2
Collecting and transporting back to Earth samples of other planets, moons, asteroids and comets is extremely difficult, costly and time-consuming. But as just-released papers based on Japan's Hayabusa2 sample return mission to the asteroid Ryugu make abundantly clear, the results can be fabulous. In a series of articles in the journal Science, scientists who studied …
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A New Twist On Planet Formation
Before the first exoplanets were discovered in the 1990s, our own solar system served as the model for what solar systems looked like. The physical and chemical dynamics that formed our system were also seen as the default model for what might have occurred in solar systems yet to be found. As the number of …
Many Worlds 