Category Astronomy/Space

That evidence is a set of advanced simulations based on observations of the rocky planet LHS 3844b, which is slightly larger than Earth. Importantly for this particular piece of research, it doesn’t look as though the exoplanet has an atmosphere.

That leaves half of LHS 3844b permanently exposed to its sun and could mean temperatures of up to roughly 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 degrees Fahrenheit) on the ‘daytime’ side, and about minus 250 degrees Celsius (minus 418 degrees Fahrenheit) on the ‘night-time’ side.”We thought that this severe temperature contrast might affect material flow in the planet’s interior,” says astronomer Tobias Meier, from the University of Bern in Switzerland.

Based on phase curve o...

A rocky planet discovered in the Virgo constellation could change how we look for life in the universe. It could be our best chance yet of studying rocky planet atmospheres outside the solar system, a new international study involving UNSW Sydney shows.

The planet, called Gliese 486b (pronounced Glee-seh), is a ‘super-Earth’: that is, a rocky planet bigger than Earth but smaller than ice giants like Neptune and Uranus. It orbits a red dwarf star around 26 light-years away, making it a close neighbour — galactically speaking.

With a piping-hot surface temperature of 430 degrees Celsius, Gliese 486b is too hot to support human life...

About 17 years ago, J. Martin Laming, an astrophysicist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, theorized why the chemical composition of the Sun’s tenuous outermost layer differs from that lower down...

Analysis of observations made by satellites in 2014 has revealed a long-lasting ‘space hurricane’ – a swirling mass of plasma several hundred kilometers above the North Pole, raining electrons instead of water.

Hurricanes in the Earth’s low atmosphere are known, but they had never before been detected in the upper atmosphere.

An international team of scientists led by Shandong University in China analysed observations made by satellites in 2014 to reveal a long-lasting hurricane, resembling those in the lower atmosphere, in the polar ionosphere and magnetosphere with surprisingly large energy and momentum deposition despite otherwise extremely quiet geomagnetic conditions.

The analysis allowed a 3D image to be created of the 1,000km-wide swirling mass of plasma several hundre...