exoplanet

NASA spots first planet in binary star system

NASA's Kepler space telescope, searching for planets around distant suns, has discovered a Saturn-size world orbiting two stars 200 light years from Earth, a long-sought "circumbinary" planet reminiscent of the fictional world Tatooine in the Star Wars saga.

"This is the first definitive detection of a circumbinary planet and the best example we have of a Tatooine-type world," said Laurance Doyle, a researcher at the SETI Institute's Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe and lead author of a paper in the journal Science describing the discovery.

"Now, we … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1400: iPhone 4 on Verizon: it makes calls (podcast)

The reviews are in, and they're just what we expected: the iPhone 4 on Verizon is really good at making phone calls. But that might not be reason enough to leave AT&T: find out why. Plus, UBB is going down in Canada (we hope), UFOs are real (for as long as the Internet will let us believe it), and we finally get around to your thoughts and comments in the Meatback loop. It's everything we hoped it would be. Oh, and I bought a MacBook Air, no big deal. What? What's the big deal? --Molly

Could newly discovered planet sustain life?

A team of astronomers said today that they've discovered the first solid example of a planet outside our solar system that could sustain life.

The planet, Gliese (pronounced "GLEE-zuh") 581g, orbits a star about 20 light-years away from Earth and is just the right distance from the star to enjoy temperatures that are hospitable to water in liquid form--and that are thus, researchers said, hospitable to life.

"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California at Santa Cruz and … Read more

Solar system with Earth-size planet found

After six years of painstaking observations, astronomers have identified a distant solar system with at least five Neptune-class worlds orbiting within 130 million miles or so of the parent star--closer than Mars is to the sun. Two other planets are believed to be present, including one just 1.4 times as massive as Earth.

The presumed Earth-size planet orbits a scant 2 million miles from its star, completing a full orbit, or "year," every 1.18 days. If confirmed with additional observations, this hellish world would be the smallest yet discovered, additional proof that Earth-size planets are falling … Read more

NASA's Kepler finds five 'hot Jupiters'

NASA's Kepler space telescope, which searches for Earth-like planets in habitable zones beyond our solar system, has found five new exoplanets.

NASA said on Monday that the exoplanets, planets outside of our solar system, are called Kepler 4b, 5b, 6b, 7b, and 8b. Finding those planets, NASA says, justifies using Kepler as a means of finding another Earth-like planet. The space agency also said the telescope "will meet all its science goals."

NASA's Kepler mission, which launched on March 6 last year, is designed to observe more than 150,000 stars to find Earth-like planets. NASA … Read more