20.06.10: The Low Down on WASP-12b.

 
   A bizarre exo-world just got stranger in the past month, but not in the way many news outlets would have you believe. WASP-12b is destined for a short life, one that we many have been fortunate enough to catch it in the middle of. The story starts in 2008, with the transiting exoplanet’s discovery by [...]

05.06.10: An Exoplanet Family Portrait.

 
 
   Astronomers have recently accomplished another amazing first; the first images of an exoplanetary system taken with modest sized optics. But to perform this feat, several ground-breaking techniques had to first be pioneered. The target was HR 8799, a known exoplanetary system 120 light-years distant in the constellation Pegasus. The instrument was the Hale telescope just [...]

04.06.10- “Hot Jupiters” in Retrograde.

 
   A unique battery of telescopes is revealing an unusual feature in many exoplanetary systems. Earlier this year, the Royal Astronomical Society unveiled nine new exoplanets, transiting “hot Jupiters” that cross the face of their parent star as seen from Earth. No big deal nowadays, as the exoplanet count sits at 455 and climbing, and at [...]

12.05.10- White Dwarf Lite?

 
 
   The Kepler space telescope may have bagged an unexpected prize during its hunt for exo-planets. Along with five published exoplanets illustrated above, Kepler snared two potentially bizarre objects. Dubbed KOI (Kepler Objects of Interest) -81 and 74, these companions actually appear dimmer passing behind the parent star rather than in front of it. This suggests a [...]

Review: How to Build a Habitable Planet by James Kasting.

 

Out now from Princeton Press!

 

 
   Some years ago, a book entitled Rare Earth was published amid much controversy. The central thesis of this work was that events that led to the eventual habitability and diversity of life and intelligence on Earth were so improbable, as be near to impossible to replicate elsewhere in our galaxy. [...]

24.04.10-Our Existence: Justified.

 Earth: Safe & Sound?
   The formation of the Earth poses a key dilemma to planetary accretionary theory; namely, why are we here at all? Standard models would say that the Earth and other planets coalesced out of the proto-solar nebula to form. However, spiral density waves within the same nebula should have drawn down orbital [...]

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