Tag: planets
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NASA Finds More Earth-like Planets Outside Solar System
from japantimes.com: More planets that are near twins to Earth have been found outside our solar system – tantalizing worlds that could host extraterrestrial life. Astronomers announced Tuesday that, depending on definitions, they have confirmed three or four more planets that are about the same size as Earth and are in the not-too-hot, not-too-cold “Goldilocks…
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‘Godzilla of Earths’ Identified
from bbc.com: There is a new class of planet out there that astronomers are calling the “mega-Earth”. It is an object with a hard surface like our own world but much, much bigger. The necessity for the new designation follows the discovery of a planet which has a mass some 17 times that of Earth.…
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‘Diamond’ Planets MoreCommon Than First Thought
from RT.com: Carbon-rich planets containing big deposits of diamonds and graphite could turn out to be more common than previously thought, Yale astronomers discovered. The findings trigger a debate on how the carbon environments impact climate, geology and life. “Despite the relatively small amount of carbon on Earth, carbon has been critical for the emergence…
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Kepler-186f: First Earth-Sized, Potentially Habitable Exoplanet Found
from popularmechanics.com: A team of astrophysicists at the SETI Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center has just reached a major milestone in the search for life-supporting planets outside our solar system. For the first time, they have discovered an Earth-sized planet nestled in the temperate, liquid-water supporting distance from its star—the so-called habitable zone. “This…
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NASA Kepler Telescope Discovers 715 New Planets
from smh.com.au: NASA has announced a torrent of new planet discoveries, hailing a “bonanza” of 715 worlds now known outside the solar system thanks to the Kepler space telescope’s planet-hunting mission. A new method for verifying potential planets led to the volume of new discoveries from Kepler, which aims to help humans search for other…
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Astronomers Discover Planet That Shouldn’t Be There
from phys.org: An international team of astronomers, led by a University of Arizona graduate student, has discovered the most distantly orbiting planet found to date around a single, sun-like star. It is the first exoplanet – a planet outside of our solar system – discovered at the UA.
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Three Potentially Habitable Planets Found Orbiting Gliese 667C
from universetoday.com: A closer look at the previously-studied nearby star Gliese 667C has revealed a treasure trove of planets – at least six – with three super-Earths in the habitable zone around the star. Gliese 667C is part of a triple star system (Gliese 667) and is just over one third of the mass of…