New theory proposes that humans — and analogous life beyond Earth — may represent the probable outcome of biological and planetary evolution UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Humanity may not be extraordinary ...

New research explains how dust links the formation, evolution, and fate of stars and planets, and why future telescopes are needed to observe these processes in detail ...

How do terrestrial planets like Earth form and evolve to enable life to exist? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as a pair of scientists from the Southwest Research ...

The black star represents the position of the star. The colored lines are the orbits of two planets. The yellow one is the outer, and it is highly inclined. The inner one is the red one. As time ...

Astronomers have discovered an unusual exoplanet that has managed to retain its atmosphere despite intense nearby radiation from a giant red star. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University found the ...

A peculiar planet unraveled by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has left astronomers scratching their heads. Despite being bombarded with intense radiation from its red giant parent ...

When a star is young, it is often still surrounded by a primordial rotating disk of gas and dust, from which planets can form. Astronomers like to find such disks because they might be able to catch ...