K2-360 is a newly found planetary system with a super-dense planet, likely the core of a former larger world, shaped by ...

Even if no life is found on other planets, smart survey design and careful statistics can still reveal how rare, or common, ...

NASA has explored the space beyond Earth and our solar system with spacecraft like Voyagers 1 and 2, and how we’ve discovered ...

At a famous 1950 lunch among physicists, Enrico Fermi wondered, "Where are all the aliens?" How far have we come toward ...

Comparing young and old exoplanets helps astronomers understand how planets form, evolve, and change over time.

As astronomers delve deeper into the diversity of worlds orbiting distant stars, a new study suggests comparing populations ...

Scientists are using an array of instruments to detect other planets, some of which may harbor life—and others that most ...

What can Venus-like exoplanets, also known as exoVenuses, teach us about our own solar system and potentially finding life ...

With METIS and MICADO, two instruments for what will be the largest optical telescope in the world, the Extremely Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile, have passed the final ...

And Kepler-16 b, located roughly 250 light-years away, is the real deal. Discovered in 2011, this exoplanet defies the traditional solitary planetary orbit by circling two stars — much like the ...

Recently we learned about the exoplanet Kepler-186f, a potentially earthlike, potentially habitable world only around 500 lightyears away. But when I mentioned that here plants would grow red ...

It started as another exoplanet in a group labeled “ordinary.” No one expected that a world, once thought to be a mini-Neptune, would reveal traits of a super-Venus and change how we see certain ...