The six planets of the HD110067 system create together a mesmerising geometric pattern due to their resonance-chain.© CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 / Thibaut Roger / NCCR Planets Astronomers have uncovered six sub-Neptune exoplanets dancing in lock-step around the same distant star, solving a big mystery in the process. The ancient, pristine system opens a window into…

November 30, 2023 3 min read A strong geomagnetic storm is expected to hit Earth after several outbursts from the sun merged into one large blob of plasma By Daisy Dobrijevic & SPACE.com The sun as seen by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft in late November 2023, including a large solar flare emitted from the…

This is an artist’s impression of a young star surrounded by a protoplanetary disc in which planets are forming. An international team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to provide the first observation of water and other molecules in the inner, rocky-planet-forming regions of a disc in one of the most…

For quite a while, an asteroid named Phaethon has presented astronomers with something of a conundrum.  When it passes closest to the sun during its orbit, a long tail of material can be seen leaving the three-mile-wide (five-kilometer-wide) rock. However, if Phaethon’s tail is the stuff of usual comets — ice and carbon dioxide —…

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Astronomers have discovered a key ingredient for life at the edge of our Milky Way galaxy. A team from the University of Arizona detected the presence of phosphorus while studying molecular clouds on the outskirts…

“How did you get interested in astronomy and life in the Universe?” I have been asked this question a lot as I have been doing interviews about The Little Book of Aliens, my new book unpacking the science of astrobiology. Since the book also covers a scientist’s perspective on UFOs/UAPs, when people ask about the overlap…

Skewed planetary pathways around a star aren’t so strange after all. Scientists have known that all the planets in our solar system follow a slightly slanted trajectory as they circle the sun — but a new study shows that the phenomenon may not be unique to our cosmic neighborhood. It’s common, the authors say, for…