habitable zone tagged posts

An artist’s illustration depicts the interior of a low-mass star. Such stars have different interior structures than our Sun, so they are not expected to show magnetic activity cycles. However, astronomers have discovered that the nearby star Proxima Centauri defies that expectation and shows signs of a seven-year activity cycle. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

In August astronomers announced that the nearby star Proxima Centauri hosts an Earth-sized planet (called Proxima b) in its habitable zone. At first glance, Proxima Centauri seems nothing like our Sun. It’s a small, cool, red dwarf star only 1/10 as massive and 1/1000 as luminous as the Sun. However, new research shows that it is sunlike in one surprising way: it has a regular cycle of starspots.

Starspots (like sunspots) are dark blotches...

Representation of the interior of Enceladus with icy crust, ocean and solid core. ROB researchers think that Dione may also have a subsurface ocean. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

A subsurface ocean lies deep within Saturn’s moon Dione, according to new data from the Cassini mission to Saturn. Two other moons of Saturn, Titan and Enceladus, are already known to hide global oceans beneath their icy crusts, but a new study suggests an ocean exists on Dione as well. The researchers of the Royal Observatory of Belgium show gravity data from recent Cassini flybys can be explained if Dione’s crust floats on an ocean 100 kilometers below the surface. The ocean is several tens of kilometers deep and surrounds a large rocky core...

This artist’s impression shows a view of the surface of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System. The double star Alpha Centauri AB also appears in the image to the upper-right of Proxima itself. Proxima b is a little more massive than the Earth and orbits in the habitable zone around Proxima Centauri, where the temperature is suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Pale Red Dot campaign reveals Earth-mass world in orbit around Proxima Centauri using ESO telescopes and other facilities. The long-sought world, Proxima b, orbits its cool red parent star every 11 days and has a temperature suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface...

Rice University scientists propose that life in the solar system could have been very different – See more at: http://news.rice.edu/2016/07/05/lush-venus-searing-earth-it-could-have-happened-2/#sthash.pz2Lc0vd.dpuf

Life in the solar system could have been very different. If conditions had been just a little different an eon ago, there might be plentiful life on Venus and none on Earth. The idea isn’t so far-fetched, according to a hypothesis by Rice University scientists who published their thoughts on life-sustaining planets, the planets’ histories and the possibility of finding more...