Planets

A picture snapped by Spirit near Home Plate shows silica formations poking out of the soil, which may have been formed by microbial life.

Mysterious Martian 'Cauliflower' May Be the Latest Hint of Alien Life

Unusual silica formations spotted by a NASA rover look a lot like structures formed by microbes around geysers on Earth

A new analysis indicates that 22% of Sun-like stars harbor planets roughly the size of Earth in their habitable zones.

There Are Probably Way More Earth-Like Exoplanets Than We Imagined

A new analysis indicates that 22 percent of Sun-like stars may harbor planets roughly the size of Earth in their habitable zones

Super-Earth exoplanets may actually be severely uninhabitable, new research suggests.

“Earth-Like” Exoplanets May Actually Be Mini-Neptunes

Many newly discovered exoplanets may not be able to shed their dense hydrogen atmospheres, making them unsuitable for life

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Should Pluto’s Planet Status Be Reinstated? Not Yet

Discovery of a fifth moon circling Pluto has some questioning where the "dwarf planet" category still applies to this faraway member of the Solar System

An artist's conception of the star LkCa 15 and the nearby protoplanet

A Planet Spotted As It Begins To Form

Scientists using the Keck telescope in Hawaii have found what may be a protoplanet, the youngest planet ever found

Sofia Kovalevskaya, Emmy Noether and Ada Lovelace are just three of the many famous female mathematicians you should know.

Five Historic Female Mathematicians You Should Know

Albert Einstein called Emmy Noether a "creative mathematical genius"

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A Solar System Rich in Planets

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Music of the Heavenly Spheres (Part 2) — Holst, Haydn, Handel and More…

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Music of the Heavenly Spheres (Part 1)

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What Did You Do in College? These Students Discovered a Planet

That’s right. These three undergraduates from Leiden University in the Netherlands discovered a planet, and not just any old planet

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An Interview with Rob Irion, Author of "The Planet Hunters"

Rob Irion spoke with Amy Crawford about his article, "The Planet Hunters"

Artist depiction of the MESSENGER spacecraft in orbit around Mercury

Being There

Robotic spacecraft allow geologists to explore other planets as if they were on-site

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Look! Up in the Sky! It's a Bird! It's a Planet. It's a Very Large Ball of Ice!

It's Pluto, with its moon, Charon

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Planets Around Other Stars Are Hot Hot Hot

Suddenly we find that lots of nearby stars have their own planets, even though so far we can "see" only the giants

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