This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights .
Billy Edwards , Project Scientist of the Twinkle Space Mission, Research Fellow of Astronomy, UCL
Until the early 2000s, the only known planets were located in our own neighbourhood, the Solar System. They broadly form two categories: the small rocky planets in the inner Solar System and the cold gaseous planets located in the outer part. With the discovery of exoplanets, planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, additional classes of planets were discovered and a new picture started to emerge . Our Solar System is by no means typical.
Quite a lot has been going on:
Alien Planet Theia Buried Inside Earth Found by Scientists | Observer
NASA's TESS spacecraft has already found 2,200 possible planets
Some of the discoveries are decidedly unusual. The rocky planet TOI-700 d is just 100 light-years away. LHS 3844 b is a "hot super-Earth" with an extremely close 11-hour orbit. TOI 1690 b is the rare survivor of a red giant star engulfing planets in its orbit, while TOI 849 b appears to be a gas giant that either lost its atmosphere or never had one.
In today's top tech stories, Visa works with Cypto.com to test using USD Coin cryptocurrency for payment settlements. Meanwhile, Boston Dynamics shows off a new warehouse robot named Stretch, and Sony to close the online store for older PlayStation consoles.
NASA planet hunter spied 2,200 candidate worlds in its first 2 years | Space
A NASA spacecraft built to spot alien worlds has completed its first two years of work, and the tally is in: the mission hauled in 2,241 new exoplanet candidates for scientists to study.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite ( TESS ) launched in April 2018, designed to spend two years poring over most of the sky. Each month, the spacecraft turns to a new strip of stars and stares, watching for the characteristic dips in brightness caused by a planet crossing between star and telescope. In a new catalog, astronomers offer a detailed view of a host of planet candidates the spacecraft identified in its first two years of work.
Many things are taking place:
In The Search For Exoplanets, Scientists Hope To Find A Planet Like Our Own - Space -
This illustration shows what the TRAPPIST-1 system might look like from a vantage point near planet TRAPPIST-1f (at right). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech This illustration shows what the TRAPPIST-1 system might look like from a vantage point near planet TRAPPIST-1f (at right). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Scientists like Dr. George Ricker, a senior researcher at MIT, and Dr. Theodora Karalidi, an astrophysicist at the University of Central Florida are leading the hunt, using data from space telescopes to help us gain a better understanding of these exoplanets.
Massive Hunks of Another Planet Are Inside Earth
There’s a planet inside our planet. And it’s very very big. That’s what researchers from Arizona State University are theorizing. How these continentent-sized pieces of another world got there, what that has to do with the moon, and how scientists used geology and earthquakes to make this hypothesis is a very cool story, and it begins with two planets. Two relatively new and very hot planets.
The current prevalent theory about the creation of the moon is that around 4.5 billion years ago it wasn’t just earth in the “goldilocks” zone orbiting our sun, but also a second, smaller planet called Theia was there, sharing an intersecting orbit with Earth . And what’s inevitable with intersecting orbits is that they will eventually … intersect.
The nine boundaries humanity must respect to keep the planet habitable
But over the past two centuries, humanity has dramatically increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, pushing us outside this "safe" climate zone; outside the conditions for which civilization has been designed.
Unfortunately for us, climate change represents just one of nine critical planetary boundaries, which the imprudent actions of our species risk dangerously destabilizing and overshooting.
Together, the stability of these nine processes is essential to maintaining the Earth's atmosphere, oceans and ecosystems in the delicate balance that has allowed human civilizations to flourish. However, these are also the processes that human activities have impacted most profoundly.
Planetary Scientists Discover There May Be Many Planets With Water-Rich Atmospheres
A study suggests that exoplanets close to their stars may actually retain a thick atmosphere full of water. Above, an artist’s illustration of the exoplanet WASP-121b, which appears to have water in its atmosphere. Credit: Engine House VFX, At-Bristol Science Centre, University of Exeter
However, a new study by University of Chicago and Stanford University researchers suggests a mechanism whereby these planets could not only develop atmospheres full of water vapor, but keep them for long stretches. Published on March 15, 2021, in the Astrophysical Journal Letters , the research expands our picture of planetary formation and could help direct the search for habitable worlds in other star systems.
Happening on Twitter
How can some planets be hotter than stars? We've started to unravel the mystery. https://t.co/q4Lk1UTHJV https://t.co/Adu9RpX2QD SPACEdotcom (from NYC) Sun Mar 28 14:57:09 +0000 2021
Solar systems are different. Some have multiple stars orbiting each other. Planets can orbit one star or several. https://t.co/madAxwIXOM marsrader (from Planet Earth (for now)) Wed Mar 24 19:56:05 +0000 2021
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