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Eliza Strickland

80beats

Astronomers Draw Ever Closer to Finding a Nearly Earth Object

TOI-6894b Exoplanet - artist's impression (Image Credit: University of Warwick/Mark Garlick) 

Exoplanet TOI-6894b

Learn how a new discovery of a giant planet can help scientists refine their theories of how planets form.

A Giant Planet Forming Around a Small Star Creates Cosmic Mystery 

Clavascidium lacinulatum, or brown stipplescale lichen, is a common sight in the Mojave Desert. (Image Credit: Bob O'Kennan via iNaturalist) 

lichen

Learn why a lichen found in the Mojave Desert has become key evidence in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Desert Lichen Resists Intense Solar Radiation, Providing Evidence for Extraterrestrial Life

 Image of the disk around the star TWA 7 recorded using ESO’s Very Large Telescope’s SPHERE instrument. The image captured with JWST’s MIRI instrument is overlayed. We can clearly see the empty area around TWA 7 B in the R2 ring (CC #1). (Image Credit: JWST/ESO/Lagrange) 

JWST TWA7 

Learn more about TWA 7 b, an exoplanet with the mass of Saturn that was captured by creating a fake eclipse.

James Webb Space Telescope Captures Smallest Exoplanet Ever Seen in Historic First

A disintegrating planet orbits a giant star. “The extent of the tail is gargantuan, stretching up to 9 million kilometers long,” says Marc Hon, a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.  (Image Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT)


Disintegrating Planet

Learn why the planet, BD+05 4868 Ab, is only the fourth such discovered and will disappear in one to two million years.

A Disintegrating Planet Is Shedding Matter and Has a Comet-Like Tail 

Astronomers have detected the most promising signs yet of a possible biosignature outside the solar system, although they remain cautious. Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the astronomers, led by the University of Cambridge, have detected the chemical fingerprints of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS), in the atmosphere of the exoplanet K2-18b, which orbits its star in the habitable zone. (Image Credit: A. Smith, N. Madhusudhan (University of Cambridge))

Artist's impression of the exoplanet K2-18b

While cautious about the findings, astronomers detected traces of a chemical that, on Earth, is produced by phytoplankton.

JWST May Have Found Strongest Evidence of Life on Exoplanet K2-18b

The first Earth-size planet orbiting a star in the “habitable zone” — the range of distance from a star where liquid water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet. (Image Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech)


Kepler-186f

Learn why finding no obvious biosignatures on 40 to 80 exoplanets doesn’t mean that life doesn’t exist outside Earth. It just provides a way to narrow the search.

Astronomers Draw Ever Closer to Finding a Nearly Earth Object

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