Extrasolar Planets News -- ScienceDaily

Scientists discover “alien space weather stations” that could reveal habitable planets - Date: - March 27, 2026 - Source: - Carnegie Institution for Science - Summary: - Scientists have uncovered a surprising way to study the harsh space weather around young M dwarf stars. Mysterious dips in starlight turned out to be massive rings of plasma swirling in the stars’ magnetic fields. These structure…

Project Hail Mary meets reality: 45 planets could harbor alien life - Date: - March 25, 2026 - Source: - Royal Astronomical Society - Summary: - Astronomers have narrowed down the cosmic search for life, identifying fewer than 50 rocky planets among thousands of known exoplanets that may have the right conditions to support life. Using new data from ESA’s Gaia mission and NASA archives, researche…

Webb Telescope spots “impossible” atmosphere on ancient super Earth A scorching “lava world” once thought barren may actually be wrapped in a thick, mysterious atmosphere. - Date: - March 22, 2026 - Source: - Carnegie Institution for Science - Summary: - Astronomers have uncovered surprising evidence of a thick atmosphere surrounding TOI-561 b, a scorching, fast-orbiting rocky planet once thought…

Even JWST can’t see through this planet’s massive haze - Date: - March 18, 2026 - Source: - Penn State - Summary: - Kepler-51d is a giant, ultra-light “super-puff” planet wrapped in an unusually thick haze that’s blocking scientists from seeing what it’s made of. Observations from JWST revealed that this haze may be one of the largest ever detected, possibly stretching as wide as Earth itself. Th…

JWST reveals a strange sulfur world unlike any planet we know - Date: - March 17, 2026 - Source: - University of Oxford - Summary: - Astronomers have identified a strange new kind of exoplanet that challenges how scientists classify worlds beyond our Solar System. The planet, L 98-59 d, appears to contain a vast ocean of molten rock beneath its surface that traps large amounts of sulfur deep insi…

NASA launches twin spacecraft to solve the mystery of Mars’ lost atmosphere - Date: - March 14, 2026 - Source: - NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center - Summary: - Mars didn’t always look like the barren world we see today. Over billions of years, the Sun’s solar wind stripped away much of its atmosphere, helping transform it from a warmer, wetter planet into a frozen desert. NASA’s twin-spacecraft …

Astronomers think they just witnessed two planets colliding Astronomers may have witnessed a dramatic planetary collision around a distant star—possibly a replay of the event that created Earth’s moon. - Date: - March 11, 2026 - Source: - University of Washington - Summary: - Astronomers have caught what may be a rare cosmic catastrophe unfolding 11,000 light-years away. A seemingly ordinary sun-…

Why the outer solar system is filled with giant cosmic “snowmen” Cosmic snowmen beyond Neptune may be the natural result of gravity quietly at work. - Date: - February 23, 2026 - Source: - Michigan State University - Summary: - Far beyond Neptune, in the frozen depths of the Kuiper Belt, many ancient objects oddly resemble giant snowmen made of ice and rock. For years, scientists wondered how the…

Astronomers watch a massive star collapse into a black hole without a supernova A massive star in Andromeda just vanished — and left behind a newborn black hole glowing in the dark. - Date: - February 14, 2026 - Source: - Simons Foundation - Summary: - A massive star 2.5 million light-years away simply vanished — and astronomers now know why. Instead of exploding in a supernova, it quietly collap…

Rocky planet discovered in outer orbit challenges planet formation theory - Date: - February 14, 2026 - Source: - McMaster University - Summary: - Astronomers have uncovered a distant planetary system that flips a long-standing rule of planet formation on its head. Around the small red dwarf star LHS 1903, scientists expected to find rocky planets close in and gas giants farther out — the same pa…

Twin beams blast from a hidden star in stunning Hubble Space Telescope image Hubble unveils a dying star cracking open the dazzling, dust-filled Egg Nebula in a rare cosmic transformation. - Date: - February 13, 2026 - Source: - NASA - Summary: - A dazzling new Hubble image peels back the layers of the mysterious Egg Nebula, a rare and fleeting phase in a Sun-like star’s death just 1,000 light-ye…

Astronomers discover an Earth-like planet that may be colder than Mars - Date: - February 12, 2026 - Source: - NASA - Summary: - A newly identified planet candidate, HD 137010 b, looks strikingly Earth-like in size and orbit — but it may be colder than Mars due to its dimmer star. If it has a thick enough atmosphere, though, this icy world could still surprise us. - Share: Astronomers have identi…

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is spraying water across the solar system The discovery suggests that alien planetary systems may harbor familiar ingredients for life. - Date: - February 11, 2026 - Source: - Auburn University Department of Physics - Summary: - For millions of years, a frozen wanderer drifted between the stars before slipping into our solar system as 3I/ATLAS—only the third known inte…

Astronomers shocked by how these giant exoplanets formed JWST just found evidence that some “super-Jupiters” may have formed like planets, not failed stars. - Date: - February 11, 2026 - Source: - University of California - San Diego - Summary: - A distant star system with four super-sized gas giants has revealed a surprise. Thanks to JWST’s powerful vision, astronomers detected sulfur in their a…

Jupiter’s clouds are hiding something big - Date: - January 31, 2026 - Source: - University of Chicago - Summary: - Jupiter’s swirling storms have concealed its true makeup for centuries, but a new model is finally peeling back the clouds. Researchers found the planet likely holds significantly more oxygen than the Sun, a key clue to how Jupiter—and the rest of the solar system—came together. The…

Puffy baby planets reveal a missing stage of planet formation - Date: - January 31, 2026 - Source: - National Institutes of Natural Sciences - Summary: - A young star called V1298 Tau is giving astronomers a front-row seat to the birth of the galaxy’s most common planets. Four massive but extremely low-density worlds orbiting the star appear to be inflated precursors of super-Earths and sub-Neptu…

Dark stars could solve three major mysteries of the early universe Dark matter–powered stars may be the missing link behind JWST’s strangest and most exciting cosmic discoveries. - Date: - January 28, 2026 - Source: - Colgate University - Summary: - JWST has revealed a strange early universe filled with ultra-bright “blue monster” galaxies, mysterious “little red dots,” and black holes that seem …

Radio waves revealed what happened before a star exploded - Date: - January 28, 2026 - Source: - University of Virginia College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences - Summary: - For the first time, astronomers have captured radio signals from a rare exploding star, exposing what happened in the years leading up to its death. The radio waves reveal that the star violently shed huge amounts of ma…

A dying star’s final breath glows in a new Webb image of the Helix Nebula - Date: - January 26, 2026 - Source: - ESA/Webb - Summary: - Webb’s latest image of the Helix Nebula reveals a dramatic close-up of a dying star shedding its outer layers. The detailed view highlights glowing knots of gas shaped by fast-moving stellar winds colliding with older material. Changes in color trace a shift from …

“Stars like the Sun don’t just stop shining,” but this one did A distant star went dark for months—and the cause was a colossal, metal-filled cloud likely born from a catastrophic planetary collision. - Date: - January 24, 2026 - Source: - Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) - Summary: - A distant Sun-like star suddenly went dark for months, stunning astronomers who quick…