When you’re looking for alien life, the best place to look is somewhere like Earth; the only place we know of that life exists. Kepler-186f, the first Earth-sized planet to be found in the habitable zone of a star, is the best bet we’ve ever found.
Back when Pluto had some status in our solar system, a handy way to remember the names of the planets was the ‘My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas’ mnemonic, where the first letter of each word represented each celestial orb. But it’s just confusing now that Pluto’s gone, so maybe a set of planet-themed plates might be a better learning tool.
     |
For the first time ever, astronomers have identified a small planet with a ring system. They previously thought that such a phenomenon could only happen on large planets like Saturn and Jupiter. But this special space rock, known as 10199 Chariklo, is a small planet called a Centaur.
| |
The search for a new Earth outside the solar system seems to be nearing its end. NASA’s Ames Research Center astronomer Thomas Barclay has found a planet nearly the size of Earth in the habitable zone of a star in the Milky Way.
| |
NASA scientists are poring over their most detailed snapshots of our universe, searching for the hallmark shapes that indicate a planet being formed. And you can help them, even if you never got that Ph.D. in astronomy, just by hopping on the Disk Detective website.
| |
You know about those plans to visit an asteroid
| |
How do you understand something you can barely see, never visited and is light years away from us? By being really, really smart at connecting dots. In this video, NASA explains its process in figuring out what alien planets are like with the limited information it has.
| |
There may well be more than 60 billion habitable planets
| |
Hayden Planetarium Director and supreme astrophysics badass Neil deGrasse Tyson recently took to his podcast, Star Talk Radio, to answer a few questions from the audience as read by noted funnyman Eugene Mirman. And fortunately for us, Grand Moff Tyson decided to take the one about blowing up planets.
| |
A team of astrophysicists have made an exciting however complex discovery a mere 170 light years away. In their own words, it’s "the first evidence of a water-rich rocky planetary body" outside of our own solar system to have evidence of water. It’s the "rocky" bit that makes it Earth-like.
| |
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
