Astronomy, features and articles | Educational Science

Jun 30, 2023

Mysterious 'zombie planet' Halla seems to have survived the explosive death of its star. How?

Astronomers have discovered a Jupiter-size planet that shouldn't exist after the sudden and violent expansion of its host star. The gas giant 8 Ursae Minoris b — also known as Halla — is a hot Jupiter planet located 520 light-years from Earth. The enormous world seemingly faced certain destruction after...

Jul 11, 2023

Mirror-like exoplanet that 'shouldn't exist' is the shiniest world ever discovered

A bizarre exoplanet with metallic clouds that rain titanium onto its scalding-hot interior is the shiniest planet ever discovered, a new study shows. The Neptune-size world, which scientists say shouldn't exist, acts like a giant mirror, reflecting light back toward its home star, which is positioned unusually close to the...

Jul 12, 2023

Star system with galaxy-like 'arms' may be holding a secret planet

Our Milky Way galaxy is a collection of stars famously arranged in a series of spiral arms wrapped around a black hole center. But galaxies aren't the only spiral structures in the universe; individual stars can have swirling, spiral arms as well. And new research is helping to unravel how...

Jul 19, 2023

1st known 'Trojan' planets discovered locked in the exact same orbit around a star

Astronomers have discovered the first evidence of ultra-rare 'Trojan' planets: two sibling planets bound on the same orbit around the same star. The potential co-orbiting planets, dancing around the young star PDS 70 roughly 370 light-years away, consist of a Jupiter-size planet and a cloud of debris — possibly the...

Jul 25, 2023

A new, Jupiter-size planet is on the verge of being born, and astronomers have incredible images of it

A strangely-flickering star has led two of the world's most powerful telescopes to a rare and wonderful sight: A young star system, pregnant with enormous clumps of gas, on the verge of birthing a giant, Jupiter-size planet. Scientists discovered the stellar baby bumps around a star called V960 Mon, located...

Aug 18, 2023

Bizarre 'failed star' the size of Jupiter is 2,000 degrees hotter than the sun

A newly discovered star system is breaking records — and helping scientists unravel the mysteries of an extreme type of planet known as hot Jupiters. In a paper published Aug. 14 in the journal Nature Astronomy, researchers describe how the system could help further our understanding of worlds beyond our...

Sep 11, 2023

James Webb telescope could detect life on Earth from across the galaxy, new study suggests

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would be able to spot the signs of our civilization on Earth if it was spying on us from another star system in the Milky Way, a new study shows. The finding raises hopes that the state-of-the-art spacecraft could detect alien civilizations as it...

Sep 14, 2023

James Webb telescope sees potential signs of alien life in the atmosphere of a distant 'Goldilocks' water world

Earlier this week, Live Science reported that NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) could likely detect signs of extraterrestrial life on an Earth-like planet up to 50 light-years away. Now, a new study reveals that the state-of-the-art spacecraft may have already spotted one such hint of life — alien farts...

Oct 19, 2023

Mysterious signals from 'hell planet' 40 light-years from Earth could finally be solved by James Webb Space Telescope

The first super-Earth astronomers ever discovered has given off strange signals for nearly two decades, and scientists may have finally figured out why. Volcanoes on this hellish world periodically open up and spew hot gas that forms an atmosphere, only for that atmosphere to burn off and leave the planet...

Oct 20, 2023

James Webb telescope detects alien planet with clouds made of quartz

A massive, gassy planet 1,300 light-years away is so hot, its clouds are made of quartz crystals. Studying it could help scientists understand more about how clouds form in extreme alien environments. The finding, published Oct. 16 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, comes from an international team of researchers using...

Nov 9, 2023

The oldest continents in the Milky Way may be 5 billion years older than Earth's

The oldest continents in our galaxy may have arisen 5 billion years before Earth’s, new research suggests — and that means there may be multiple worlds in the Milky Way harboring alien life even more advanced than our own. Astrobiologists think a planet needs to have certain features to support...

Nov 17, 2023

James Webb telescope detects 'fluffy' alien planet that rains sand

An exoplanet hosts strange, sandy clouds high in its atmosphere, a new study reveals. While the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may spend a lot of its time observing the farthest reaches of the early universe when galaxies were only just starting to form, it also spends plenty of its...

Nov 21, 2023

Scientists may finally understand why large alien planets keep turning into 'super-Earths'

The air around a few planets beyond our solar system is leaking away into space, causing these worlds to get smaller, astronomers reported on Nov. 15. And these planets' atmospheres aren't getting blown away by harsh winds from their stars as you might expect, but rather by their own doing....

Nov 29, 2023

6 alien worlds have been 'waltzing' in perfect rhythm for 4 billion years

Astronomers have discovered a remarkable star system with six planets unlike any in our solar system. According to new research, all six planets orbit the same star in resonance with each other, following an unwavering rhythm that has lasted billions of years. Because of this peculiar resonance, the outermost planet...

Dec 1, 2023

Enormous planet discovered around tiny star could break our understanding of solar system formation

Scientists have discovered a planet that is way too big for its tiny star. Its existence could upend everything we thought we knew about how solar systems form, researchers say. The ultra-cool dwarf star, named LHS 3154, lies 51 light-years from our solar system and is about nine times less...