Articles about 'planets'

Professor Nicholas Tosca from the University of Cambridge is the only UK scientist selected by NASA to be part of the core science team for the Mars Perseverance 2020 mission, which is searching for signs of past life on the red planet.

A UK-led team of astronomers has discovered a rare molecule – phosphine – in the clouds of Venus, pointing to the possibility of extra-terrestrial ‘aerial’ life.

Researchers have used a combination of AI and quantum mechanics to reveal how hydrogen gradually turns into a metal in giant planets.

The strange orbits of some objects in the farthest reaches of our solar system, hypothesised by some astronomers to be shaped by an unknown ninth planet, can instead be explained by the combined gravitational force of small objects orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune, say researchers. 

An international team of astronomers has detected titanium oxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet for the first time. The results, reported in the journal Nature, provide unique information about the chemical composition and the temperature and pressure structure of the atmosphere of this unusual and very hot world.

An international exoplanet ‘think tank’ is meeting this week in Cambridge to deliberate on the ten most important questions that humanity could answer in the next decade about planets outside our solar system.

After analyzing four years of Kepler space telescope observations, astronomers from the University of Toronto, and of the University of Cambridge have given us our clearest understanding yet of a class of exoplanets called “warm Jupiters”, showing that many have unexpected planetary companions.

The most detailed map of a small, rocky ‘super Earth’ to date reveals a planet almost completely covered by lava, with a molten ‘hot’ side and solid ‘cool’ side.

On a blazing-hot exoplanet known as WASP-33b, a team of astronomers including researchers from the University of Cambridge has detected a stratosphere, one of the primary layers of Earth’s atmosphere.

Astronomers have discovered a disc of planetary debris surrounding a young sun-like star that shares remarkable similarities with the Kuiper Belt that lies beyond Neptune, and may aid in understanding how our solar system developed.