NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

  1. Content with the tag: “habitable zone

  2. Kepler Mission Finds Three Smallest ExoPlanets


    Comparing planets from outside the Solar System to Mars and Earth.This chart compares the smallest known exoplanets, or planets orbiting outside the Solar System, to our own planets Mars and Earth. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
    Astronomers using data from NASA’s Kepler mission have discovered the three smallest planets yet detected orbiting a star beyond our sun. The planets orbit a single star, called KOI-961, and are 0.78, 0.73 and 0.57 times the radius of Earth. The smallest is about the size of Mars.

    All three planets are thought to be rocky like Earth, but orbit close to their star. That makes them too hot to be in the habitable zone, which is the region where liquid water could exist. Of the more than 700 planets confirmed to orbit other stars, only...

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    Source: [NASA]

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  3. Found: An Exoplanet Orbiting in the Habitable Zone of its Star


    The planetary orbits of the Gliese 581 system compared to those of our own solar system. Image Credit: National Science Foundation.

    A team of planet hunters including scientists from the NASA Astrobiology Institute’s teams at the University of Hawai’i, Manoa and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, has announced the discovery of a planet with three times the mass of Earth orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it squarely in the middle of the star’s “habitable zone,” an area where liquid water could exist on the planet’s surface. If confirmed, this would be the most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered, and the first strong case for a potentially habitable one.

    Source: [NASA Press Release]

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  4. AbSciCon '08: The Astrobiology Universe


    AbSciCon 2008

    The opening speaker at the 2008 Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon), Lord Martin Rees of the University of Cambridge, said that our universe may just be one of many. Multiple universes could be stacked sideways like sheets of paper, separated by only a thin margin of space. We would never know they were there unless we could be awakened to the existence of that other dimension.

    This could have been the theme of the conference. Every morning and afternoon, nine separate talks were given simultaneously, often just separated by thin walls through...

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  5. Found: Earth-Like Planet


    A rocky planet not much larger than Earth has been detected orbiting a star close to our own neighborhood in the Milky Way, and the European astronomers who found it say it lies within the star’s “habitable zone,” where life could exist, possibly in oceans of water.

    Source: [Link]

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  6. Exoplanets and M Stars


    Members of NAI’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory Alumni Team and their colleagues have a new paper in the current issue of Astrobiology. They present a critical discussion of M star properties that are relevant for the long- and short-term thermal, dynamical, geological, and environmental stability of conventional liquid water habitable zone (HZ) M star planets.

    Source: [Link]

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  7. Final Assembly of Earth-Like Planets


    NAI Postdoctoral Fellow Sean Raymond leads a team of authors from NAI’s University of Colorado, Boulder, and University of Arizona Teams, and Virtual Planetary Laboratory and University of Washington Alumni Teams in a new publication in Astrobiology. They present analysis of water delivery and planetary habitability in 5 high-resolution simulations forming 15 terrestrial planets. Their results outline a new model for water delivery to terrestrial planets in dynamically calm systems, which may be very common in the Galaxy.

    Source: [Link]

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  8. Habitability of Planets Around M Dwarf Stars


    Multidisciplinary work from members of NAI’s SETI Institute Team and a host of collaborators across the NAI re-examines what is known at present about the potential for a terrestrial planet forming within, or migrating into, the classic liquid–surface–water habitable zone close to an M dwarf star. Their new paper, published in the current issue of Astrobiology, presents the summary conclusions of an interdisciplinary workshop sponsored by NAI and convened at the SETI Institute in 2005.

    Source: [Link]

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  9. Planets Around the Stars


    Researchers from NAI’s University of Washington, University of Colorado, Boulder, and Virtual Planetary Laboratory Teams have developed models testing planet formation in four known systems, 55 Cancri, HD 38529, HD 37124 and HD 74156. Placing Mars to Moon-sized planet embryos between giant planets and allowing them to evolve for 100 million years, they found terrestrial planets formed readily in 55 Cancri, sometimes with substantial water and orbits in the system’s habitable zone. They found HD 38529 is likely to support an asteroid belt and Mars-sized or smaller bodies but no notable terrestrial planets. No planets formed in HD 37124...

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