Tag Archives: earth like planets

Cloud modeling expands estimate of life-supporting planets

Larger habitable zone suggests 60 billion planets could sustain water, life

A new study that calculates the influence of cloud behavior on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of star in the universe. This finding means that in the Milky Way galaxy alone, 60 billion planets may be orbiting red dwarf stars in the habitable zone.

Researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University based their study, which appears in Astrophysical Journal Letters, on rigorous computer simulations of cloud behavior on alien planets. This cloud behavior dramatically expanded the estimated habitable zone of red dwarfs, which are much smaller and fainter than stars like the sun. (more…)

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Searching for Planets in Clouds of Dust

A UA astronomy research team was awarded a $600,000 grant for technology development under NASA’s Explorer mission program. The mission would send a space telescope high above Earth’s surface to watch how planets around other stars form and evolve

There has been much talk about possible Earth-like planets discovered by the Kepler space telescope launched just two years ago in the search for life outside our solar system. So far, it has discovered more than 2,326 possible Earth-like planets, and the number keeps growing. (more…)

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Citizen Scientists Join Search for Earth-like Planets

Web users around the globe will be able to help professional astronomers in their search for Earth-like planets thanks to a new online citizen science project called Planet Hunters that launched Dec. 16. at www.planethunters.org. 

Planet Hunters, which is the latest in the Zooniverse citizen science project collection, will ask users to help analyze data taken by NASA’s Kepler mission. The space telescope has been searching for planets beyond our own solar system—called exoplanets—since its launch in March 2009.  (more…)

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