Astronomers have found a unique solar system with six planets moving in harmony, untouched by outside forces since their creation billions of years ago. This discovery, announced on Wednesday, could help us understand how other solar systems in the Milky Way galaxy formed. This solar system is located 100 light-years […]
planets
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An ancient group of six exoplanets whose orbits have been unchanged for billions of years could tell us about how planetary systems like our own solar system formed. When planets orbit a star in a fixed, regular pattern, they are said to be resonant. They will continue like this until […]
Worlds with nearby neighbours can slow comets enough to let the building blocks of life survive Shutterstock/buradaki It may be easiest to deliver the ingredients for life to planets with close neighbours. Comets can carry many of the key building blocks for life, including amino acids and other organic compounds […]
It’s one of the biggest unanswered questions in science – if there’s life beyond Earth, where is it? Now, researchers from the University of Cambridge have narrowed down the search by identifying the right conditions for comets to deliver life-starting molecules. It has long been believed that the building blocks […]
A mysterious glow in the night sky was witnessed by many around the world recently but now may have been solved by scientists. The blaze of light, which stumped researchers for four years, may have been produced by the collision of two ice giant exoplanets. These planets could have been […]
Astronomers have for the first time captured the afterglow of the collision between two ice giant planets — an impact that released a blaze of light and vast plumes of dust. These emissions caused the system, which has a Sun-like star, to first double in brightness in the infrared wavelengths, […]
An illustration of the huge, glowing doughnut produced by planets colliding Mark Garlick A star system 1800 light years from our own may have been the scene of a cataclysmic collision, as two giant planets crashed together and were incinerated, leaving behind a glowing-hot doughnut. It is the first time […]
Astronomers have been left bewildered by the discovery of two giant, Jupiter-sized objects – temporarily labelled “planets” – in the depths of space. The 40 or so “planets” are not orbiting any star – like most recognised planets do, such as Earth, or Mars, around the Sun. They are instead […]