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 …
Continue reading "What Would Happen If Our Solar System Had a Super-Earth Like Many Others? Chaos."
The decades-long process of developing, refining, testing, launching, unfurling and now aligning and calibrating the most capable space telescope in history is nearing fruition. While NASA has already released a number of "first light" images of photons of light moving through the James Webb Space Telescope's optical system, the jaw-dropping "first light" that has all …
Before the explosion in discovery of extrasolar planets, the field of comparative planetology was pretty limited -- confined to examining the differences between planets in our solar system and how they may have come to pass. But over the past quarter century, comparative planetology and the demographics of planets came to mean something quite different. …
From the perspective of planet hunters and planet characterizers, a desirable solar system to explore is one that is close to ours, that has a planet (or planets) in the star's habitable zone, and has a host star that is relatively quiet. This is especially important with the very common red dwarf stars, which are …
Continue reading "Close and Tranquil Solar System Has Astronomers Excited"
Many Worlds 