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Habitable Planets
A new study of Martian dust gives insights into the ancient Martian climate. The findings hint at a wetter world.
Some astrobiologists believe life is rare, while others believe it is common in the Universe. How can we find out which view is correct?
Dr. Tyson explains where we might find aliens, why "dark matter" is a misleading term, and why you can blame physics for your favorite team's loss.
The search for worlds outside our solar system has just turned up a planet, TOI-2257 b, with a truly extreme orbit.
Whether or not life exists elsewhere in the Universe, we can be assured of one thing: We are the only human beings in the cosmos.
Think there are habitable super-Earths out there? Think again. Here in our Solar System, we have two very distinct types of planets: small, terrestrial, rocky worlds, with thin (or no) atmospheres […]
The smallest and faintest stars of all, even the failed stars that didn’t make it, are hiding some fascinating secrets. You might have thought that if we were going to […]
Maybe 100% of stars don’t have planets, after all. When stars form in the Universe, they’re created in giant bursts. A stellar nursery in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy […]
Unlike most articles that are titled with a question, the answer isn’t automatically “no.” Announced on January 6, 2020, NASA’s TESS mission has just discovered its first Earth-sized, habitable zone […]
Earth wasn’t the only potentially habitable planet in the early Solar System. What happened to Mars? If you could travel back in time to the early stages of the Solar System, […]
We know that life is possible on an Earth-like world around a Sun-like star. But can it find a way on a Super-Earth? When it comes to the origin of […]
Kepler showed us that the Universe is full of planets around other stars. TESS is giving us our next great leap. It’s been nearly a decade since NASA’s Kepler mission first […]
With thousands of discovered planets around stars beyond our own Sun, why haven’t we found the next Earth? Over the past 30 years, astronomers have gone from zero known extra-solar planets […]
The first planets were only gas. The second included rocky ones, but life wasn’t possible. Here’s how we finally got there. Here in the Universe today, potentially habitable planets are practically […]
The ingredients for life are everywhere, but so far the only life we know of comes from Earth. Here’s how that might change. Ever since human beings first turned our eyes […]
Have you heard that life is unlikely around low-mass, red dwarf stars? It might be time to rethink that flawed conclusion. “Laws of nature mixed with evolutionary/historical contingencies allow for […]
But are any of these potentially Earth-like worlds actually inhabited? Here are the prospects. “It isn’t only the beauty of the night sky that thrills me. It’s the sense I […]