Cutting-Edge News Online

Some Stars Could Support as Many as 7 Habitable Planets
by Matt Williams | Universe Today

In recent decades, over 4,000 extrasolar planets have been confirmed beyond our Solar System. With so many planets available for study, astronomers have learned a great deal about the types of planets that exist out there and what kind of conditions are prevalent. For instance, they have been able to get a better idea of just how common habitable planets are (at least by our standards).

As it turns out, a surprisingly high number of planets out there could support life. That is the conclusion reached by a team of astronomers and planetary scientists who conducted a study of the possible sizes of habitable zones (HZ) based on stellar classification. After considering how many planets could stably orbit within them, they came to the conclusion that stars with no Jupiter-sized gas giants can have as many as seven habitable planets!

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Russian space industry giant Energia is involved in the production of everything from rockets and satellites to space stations and ballistic missiles, and is the prime mover behind the current Russian manned spaceflight programs. Korolev Rocket & Space Corporation Energia has created and patented a means to fly cosmonauts to the Moon and back without an expensive new heavy-launch rocket.

Russian Cosmonauts Could Be Going to the Moon Without a Super-Heavy Launch Vehicle

The star Kepler-160 and its companion KOI-456.04 are more reminiscent of the Sun-Earth system than any previously known exoplanet-star pair. Among the more than 4,000 known exoplanets, KOI-456.04 is something special: less than twice the size of Earth, it orbits a Sun-like star. And it does so with a star-planet distance that could permit planetary surface temperatures conducive to life.

“Mirror Image” of the Earth and Sun Discovered 3000 Light-Years Away

A team of university researchers has found that the probability of discovering Earth-like planets within their early stages of formation is actually higher than previously presumed. New research has indicated that there are many more stars in space that are comparable to our solar system’s sun than expected in the groups of Milky Way stars the study examined, according to a news release on the matter.

Chances of Finding Young, Earth-Like Planets Higher Than Previously Thought

Proxima b, the Closest Exoplanet We Know, May Be Even More Earth-Like than We Thought
by Chelsea Gohd | Space.com

The closest alien planet to our solar system is even more Earth-like than scientists had thought, new observations suggest.

In a new study, an international team of researchers found that Proxima b, which lies just 4.2 light-years from Earth, is just 17% more massive than our planet.

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SpaceX Wants to Send People to Mars – Here’s What the Trip Might Look Like
by Meghan Bartels | Space.com

Even as SpaceX prepares to launch astronauts for the first time, the company is sharing its dreams for human spaceflight on a much grander scale: missions to Mars.

SpaceX’s desire to put humans on Mars is nothing new; the company was founded with that goal in mind. But now, the company is testing early versions of the spacecraft it envisions using on such journeys, evaluating potential landing sites and thinking through what a long-term base on the Red Planet might look like many years from now.

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About half of all the star systems in the galaxy are made of pairs or triplets of stars. Our solar system features just one star, the Sun, and a host of (relatively) small planets. But it was almost not the case, and Jupiter got right on the edge of becoming the Sun’s smaller sibling.

Jupiter Is so Big That Our Solar System Almost Had Two Suns

“It is technically sound, but there have been issues that have come up on almost every level.”

The Scientists Who Won’t Give Up on the Warp Drive
by Rahul Rao | Gizmodo

For most of us, traveling faster than the cosmic speed limit — the speed of light — is a science-fiction fantasy that breaks the very foundation of modern physics. But in the eyes of an engineering undergrad at the University of Alabama in Huntsville named Joseph Agnew, it’s a theory worthy of study.

The idea first came to Agnew in high school, when he became enamored of the warp drives he saw in Star Trek. “I thought about some of the technology postulated within,” he says, “and wondered what the scientific backing might be.”

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