As scientists work to understand what might make a distant planet habitable, one factor that is getting attention is the shape of the planet's orbit, how "eccentric" it might be. It might seem that a perfect circular orbit would be ideal for habitability because it would provide stability, but a new model suggests that it …
Continue reading "How Planetary Orbits, in Our Solar System and Beyond, Can Affect Habitability"
Exoplanet scientists and enthusiasts spend a lot of time trying to find, measure and understand distant planets that can -- under specific conditions -- be detected as passing in front of their host star. A majority of the 4000-plus exoplanets discovered so far were indirectly detected this way, by measuring the diminishing of stellar light …
One of the enduring puzzles of our planet is why it is so wet. Since Earth formed relatively close to the sun, planetary scientists have generally held that any of the water in the building blocks of early-forming Earth was baked out and so was unavailable to make oceans or our atmosphere. That led to …
Continue reading "An “Elegant” New Theory on How Earth Became a Wet Planet"
The detection of potentially habitable exoplanets is not the big news it once was -- there have been so many identified already that the novelty has faded a bit. But that hardly means surprising and potentially breakthrough discoveries aren't being made. They are, and one of them was just announced Monday. This is how the …
Part 2 of 2 With such a large proportion of identified exoplanets in the super-Earth to sub-Neptune class, an inescapable question arises: how conducive might they be to the origin and maintenance of life? So little is actually know about the characteristics of these planets that are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune …
Continue reading "On Super-Earths, Sub-Neptunes and Some Lessons They Teach"
Part 2 of 2 With such a large proportion of identified exoplanets in the super-Earth to sub-Neptune class, an inescapable question arises: how conducive might they be to the origin and maintenance of life? So little is actually know about the characteristics of these planets that are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune …
Continue reading "On Super-Earths, Sub-Neptunes and Some Lessons They Teach"
Many Worlds 