Earth is the only planet in our solar system with a long-term, stable supply of liquid water – essential for the formation and evolution of all organic life. But this doesn’t mean there aren’t other pockets…
Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to our own sun and appears to be home to at least one planet.
EPA/Davide De Martin/ESO
Earlier this week, a Swiss-based team searching for planets outside our solar system (exoplanets) published a paper in Nature announcing the detection of an Earth-mass planet orbiting the star Alpha Centauri…
Many exoplanets have been found, but there’s plenty left to uncover.
Dallas1200am
Over the past few months, NASA’s Kepler mission has repeatedly made headlines with announcements of new and unusual planetary systems around other stars. To name a few, we’ve had the most densely packed…
A would-be Jedi waits for Kepler in a galaxy far, far away.
It’s one of the most famous and evocative images in cinematic history – Luke Skywalker gazing out at the twin suns of Tatooine as they set, in the original Star Wars movie, A New Hope.
Such a view would…
Hundreds of exoplanets have been discovered, but are we any closer to finding life?
AAP
In the late 1980s, when I was a young whipper-snapper just starting out as an astronomer, it was quite obvious some fields had an incredibly high profile and others were outré.
The sexy ideas at the time…
