Tag Archives: exoplanets

Super-Duper Super Earths and the Search for Life

This week, I’ll talk about Professor Ethan Siegel’s view that “the myth of the super-habitable super-Earth planet” is “a scientific catastrophe”, other non-catastrophes; and a problem with “super-Earths” as a label. Along the way I’ll look at science, news, headlines … Continue reading

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TRAPPIST-1 and the Mysterious Pea Pod Planets

There may have been times when one generation’s world was much like another’s. This is not one of those times. Science textbooks of my youth included speculation that Earth’s mountains exist because our planet has been cooling and shrinking. One … Continue reading

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TRAPPIST-1 b Measured by Webb: Hot, Airless

The TRAPPIST-1 planetary system is news again, this time because we’ve taken the innermost planet’s temperature. That, by itself, isn’t newsworthy. We’ve been using infrared observations to learn how hot exoplanets are at least since 2006.1 What makes the latest … Continue reading

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Galaxies, Gravity and a Hot Terrestrial Planet

“NASA’s Webb Reveals Intricate Networks of Gas and Dust in Nearby Galaxies“Laura Betz, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland; Christine Pulliam, Hannah Braun, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Maryland; Editor Jamie Adkins (February 16, 2023) “Researchers using NASA’s James … Continue reading

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Exoplanets, Dust, and Who Sees Data First?

It’s been a little over 10 years since scientists spotted Kepler-22 b. It was the first time we’d spotted a transiting exoplanet that’s in its sun’s habitable zone. That may or may not mean that Kepler-22 b is habitable. The … Continue reading

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