Researchers from MIT and collaborating institutions have uncovered exceptionally rare traces of “proto Earth,” the ancient precursor to our planet that existed about 4.5 billion years ago. This primitive world took shape before a massive collision forever changed its chemistry and gave rise to the Earth we inhabit today. TheContinue Reading
Astronomers have identified an enormous ‘growth spurt’ in a so-called rogue planet. Unlike the planets in our Solar System, these objects do not orbit stars, free-floating on their own instead. The new observations, made with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), reveal that this free-floating planet isContinue Reading
Strong Northern Lights-like activity is the standout feature of today’s weather report, which is coming at you from a strange, extrasolar world, instead of a standard TV studio. That is thanks to astronomers from Trinity College Dublin, who used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to take a close lookContinue Reading
After the formation of the Solar System, it took a maximum of three million years for the chemical composition of the Earth’s precursor to be completed. This is shown by a new study by the Institute of Geological Sciences at the University of Bern. At this time, however, there wereContinue Reading
A team of astronomers has detected for the first time a growing planet outside our solar system, embedded in a cleared gap of a multi-ringed disk of dust and gas. The team, led by University of Arizona astronomer Laird Close and Richelle van Capelleveen, an astronomy graduate student at LeidenContinue Reading
The textbook picture of how planets form – serene, flat discs of cosmic dust – has just received a significant cosmic twist. New research, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, is set to reshape this long-held view. An international team of scientists, wielding the formidable power of the Atacama LargeContinue Reading
A study led by Jenny Frediani at Stockholm University has revealed a planet-forming disk with a strikingly unusual chemical composition: an unexpectedly high abundance of carbon dioxide (CO2) in regions where Earth-like planets may one day form. The discovery, made using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), challenges long-standing assumptionsContinue Reading
An international team of astronomers, co-led by researchers at University of Galway, has made the unexpected discovery of a new planet. Detected at an early stage of formation around a young analog of our own Sun, the planet is estimated to be about 5 million years-old and most likely aContinue Reading
The host star, TOI-6894, is a red dwarf with only 20% the mass of the Sun, typical of the most common stars in our galaxy. Until now, such low-mass stars were not thought capable of forming or retaining giant planets. But as published recently in Nature Astronomy, the unmistakable signature ofContinue Reading
The twin cube satellites will operate through at least September 2026, expanding focus from the poles to the whole planet to improve modelling and weather forecasts. NASA’s PREFIRE (Polar Radiant Energy in the Far-InfraRed Experiment) mission has been extended through September 2026 and is broadening its focus from Earth’s polesContinue Reading
