exoplanet
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Supercomputer Suggests ‘Super Diamonds’ Could Exist in Space
Diamonds are the hardest naturally occurring material on Earth, but a supercomputer just modeled stuff that’s even harder. Called a ‘super-diamond,’ the theoretical material could exist beyond our planet—and maybe, one day, be created here on Earth. Like normal diamonds, super-diamonds are made from carbon atoms. This specific phase of carbon, composed of eight atoms,…
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Retired NASA Telescope Reveals Clues to the Elusive ‘Size Gap’ in Exoplanets
Exoplanets pushing their atmospheres away may explain a gap in exoplanet masses, according to a team of researchers that recently studied data from NASA’s retired Kepler Space Telescope. The activity could explain an absence of exoplanets with masses between 1.5 to 2 times the size of Earth, according to findings published this week in The…
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We’ve Underestimated Our Ability to Spot Alien Signals From Exoplanets
An encouraging new study has found that the interference from exoplanets—planets that orbit stars outside our solar system—has been overestimated in searches for extraterrestrial signals. The results from the study, released last week in The Astronomical Journal, mean that scientists can concentrate on finer frequency shifts, markedly improving the potential effectiveness of campaigns to sniff…
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See 17 Years of an Exoplanet’s Orbit in One Captivating GIF
Beta Pictoris b is a young exoplanet about 12 times as massive as Jupiter, with an orbit nearly twice as long. Now, a timelapse video of the planet’s nearly 23-year orbit lets you see most of that journey in just ten seconds. Jason Wang, an astrophysicist at Northwestern University, has led an effort to condense…