Pluto Is Now a 'Plutoid'
	Two years after it was stripped of its privileges as a planet, Pluto takes a new hit coming from the International Astronomical Union which has taken it out of the dwarf planet family and placed it into a rather strange new one called 'plutoids'. The IAU decided in 2006 that Pluto should be demoted from the rank of planet to that of dwarf planet, which is basically an object with gravitational pull strong enough to shape it into ... [read more >>]
	12 June 2008, 02:58GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Strange Objects Pop up While Probing for Dark Energy
	While searching for supernova explosions that occurred in the early universe, in hope to probe dark energy, astronomers discovered two new objects in the solar system, one orbiting somewhere between Uranus and Neptune while the other lurking in the outer regions of the system. The search for supernova explosions mostly involves finding faint light sources, albeit sometimes objects in the solar system get in the way and are accidentally dis ... [read more >>]
	04 June 2008, 04:08GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Link Between Stars and Planets Found
	Brown dwarfs, or failed stars, are stellar bodies with masses 10 to 70 times higher than Jupiter’s. Although, like all stars, they have the capability of initiating thermonuclear fusion reactions in their cores, their masses do not permit them to sustain these reactions for a very long time, unlike typical stars, such as our Sun, which are able to burn hydrogen through nuclear fusion reactions for several billion years. Canadian and Fr ... [read more >>]
	11 April 2008, 02:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Astronomer Looks for Planet, Finds Comet
	You know how they say you'll never find what you're actually looking for? It’s true, don't try to prove otherwise because I don't think you can. Last year during late October, comet Holmes suddenly suffered an outburst, thus enhancing its brightness more than one million times in the matter of a few days. In the following weeks, Holmes came to be the biggest object in the solar system, exceeding even the diame ... [read more >>]
	04 April 2008, 03:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Detection Method to Improve Earth-like Planet Search
	The technique, named by astronomers astro-comb, uses a detection method relying on measurements related to the radial velocity of the parent star, or wobble, by making observations on the wavelength shifts determined by the gravitational pull of the planet. By doing so, astronomers will be able to detect planets relatively similar to our own and to determine whether or not it is orbiting its stars in a habitable zone. Alternatively, th ... [read more >>]
	03 April 2008, 10:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Planet in the Making
	At this moment there are 277 planets known to exist outside our solar system, most of which are either gas giants or too inhospitable for life. A very little number of these exoplanets have rocky surfaces or bear a small resemblance to our planet. Astronomers from the University of St Andrews in collaboration with colleagues from the US reveal that they have discovered a planet into its early formation stage, still surrounded by a cloud of ... [read more >>]
	03 April 2008, 02:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Giant Planet is Taking Shape in Star System
	The star system we talk about is located around a well-studied star known as AB Aurigae. The star is relatively young and surrounded by a disk of material created from a gas and dust cloud that seems to be forming some kind of object inside it, like the gas giant of a brown dwarf star. Co-author of the study, Ben R. Oppenheimer of the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History argues that the object may have a mas ... [read more >>]
	27 March 2008, 05:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Water Detected in Two Planet Forming Systems
	As you have probably noticed in the last few days, planetary formation and new solar system study is getting a lot of attention lately. Especially when talking about organic molecules, water and habitable zones, all of these being considered important factors in the apparition of life. Researchers announce that water vapors have been found in the accretion disk of matter spinning around not one, but two young stars. Both have great chances ... [read more >>]
	19 March 2008, 04:59GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Distant Solar System Looks Like Our Own
	It's becoming rather clear now that our solar system is not quite as unique in the universe as previously believed. Only 12 years ago we didn't even know if other planets, except those in our solar system, exist in the universe or not, now there are more than 270 other planets that we know about. Extra-terrestrial life seems to follow the same general trend. Organic molecules can be found throughout the whole solar system,[ADMARK ... [read more >>]
	14 March 2008, 03:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Planetary Nebulae. Where is the Planet?
	Planetary nebulae have been first discovered some three centuries ago, but the astronomers of the time, being unable to clearly identify them, named nebulae by attributing them the name of "planetary", mostly because they seemed to have some resemblance to the planet Uranus. In the middle of the 19th century astronomers finally realized what the strange objects really are, not planets but massive clouds of gas and dust surroundin ... [read more >>]
	11 March 2008, 04:52GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Stellar Collisions Create Planets from Remnants
	Astronomers reveal the mystery behind the BP Piscium star located in the Pisces constellation, an old star that appears to have recently spawned a new star formation process. A new study reveals that the accretion disk of matter spinning around it formed during a stellar collision and merging of two stars. Usually, stars determine a star formation process during early life, however light spectroscopy on the surface of BP Pis ... [read more >>]
	09 February 2008, 03:50GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mini-balloons to Deploy Motes to Alien Planets
	Successfully landing micro sensor device on the surface of a planet, during planetary exploration missions, could prove somewhat difficult, especially when trying to deploy them without causing critical failures during the impact phase. Swiss and German researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, along with colleagues from the Universite de Neuchatel, believe they have the solution: dropping the compact sensors into the pla ... [read more >>]
	30 January 2008, 09:21GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

VLT Reveals the Mystery of Spinning Material Disks Around Forming Stars
	Lately, astronomers using the Very Large Telescope Interferometer have been able to probe parts of the material disk around a growing star, in order to determine how massive stars collect gas before becoming main sequence stars. The targeted object was a star in the Monoceros constellation, dubbed MWC 147. This particular star is part of a family of objects known as Herbig Ae/Be and sits more that 2,600 light years away from Eart ... [read more >>]
	30 January 2008, 05:39GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mercury Shows Evidence of Past Lava Flow
	The MESSENGER spacecraft made a successful fly-by of the planet Mercury last week, taking more than 1,200 pictures of the surface, some of them showing what seems to be evidence of past lava flows. Planetary scientist David Rothery said that the lava flow actually sits on top of the original surface crust that formed as the planet cooled, and could have occurred only after the massive number of impacts which rendered multiple cra ... [read more >>]
	22 January 2008, 03:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

White Dwarfs Stay Young by Eating Planets
	Imagine staying younger and fit for a longer time just by eating, instead of getting older and fat... if only this process would be available for all of us. Last week took place the annual American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas, where astronomers presented the results of some of the latest studies conducted in the astronomical field. Amongst these, a group of astronomers which detailed what they have observed nearly three y ... [read more >>]
	18 January 2008, 08:54GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Where is Planet X?
	There is another planet beyond the orbit of Neptune, and scientists say it's not Pluto. Ever wondered what the X in the name stands for? The X is the equivalent for unknown, opposed to the general believe that it represents the Roman numeral for 10. And another thing... how do you discover a planet that has never been observed? Believe it or not, the planet Pluto was actually discovered while astronomers were looking for Planet X, but ... [read more >>]
	16 January 2008, 06:57GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Weird Disk of Matter Takes the Shape of a Giant Moth
	It seems that the shape of the evolving young solar system, forming a 35.2 billion kilometer structure in the form of a moth, is determined by the relative motion of the young stars through the interstellar space. As it is traveling through space, the developing solar system encountered a massive cloud of interstellar dust, which causes the distortions in the protoplanetary disk, as it is being dragged behind the star. The S ... [read more >>]
	12 January 2008, 04:57GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Old Stars can Form Planets too!
	That's like having an 80 year old woman giving birth to a baby. The natural process of planetary formation, as astronomical observations proved in multiple situations, usually takes place in the first 10 to 100 million years of the star's life. However, it seems that this is not always the case. Old stars, presenting a population of planets orbiting around them, could, in fact, trigger a second planet formation process ... [read more >>]
	10 January 2008, 06:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Happy Anniversary, Spirit! Have a Bit of Dust!
	Dust is plenty, however more electric power would be pretty nice, since electronics don't run on 'dirt power'. That is true, but so is the following affirmation: 90 is not equal to 1,460! 1,460 days have passed since the Martian rover Spirit landed on the surface of the Red Planet, meaning exactly four Earth years and, after exceeding almost 17 times the expected lifetime, the exploration vehicle is still going strong, runni ... [read more >>]
	04 January 2008, 09:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Astronomers Observe Youngest Planet Around Sun-Like Star
	Compared to the age of our own planet, the Earth, which is about 4.5 billion years old, the newly discovered exoplanet is a baby, estimated to be somewhere between 8 to 10 million years old and orbiting a star very similar to the Sun. Expect no further resemblance to our solar system however, as the new exoplanet has a mass at least ten times that of the planet Jupiter, circling its sun once every 3.56 days. Located at a dis ... [read more >>]
	03 January 2008, 02:49GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Stars Shed Light on the Planet's Secrets
	A new method to study the properties of planets outside the solar system has been proposed by Jean-Loup Bertaux from the Service d'Aeronomie du CNRS. The technique is known as stellar occultation and France has suggested using it in ESA missions to study the planetary systems. The phenomenon occurs when light from a star is blocked by a body such as a planet, moon or asteroid. The method can be used to probe ring systems and atmos ... [read more >>]
	06 November 2007, 05:25GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Google Earth's Planets Updated
	Google's downloadable mapping tool Google Earth gets a new minor update which affects the Planets and the Moon layers included in the program. According to the Google Earth Blog, "the only problem is that the layers only included three months worth of prediction, so on October 22 they no longer showed future data." So, the Mountain View company updated the layer but how can we get the new ones? There's not muc ... [read more >>]
	05 November 2007, 04:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mars' Polar Caps Tilt More Towards the Sun, Revealing Ice
	Mars, planet Earth’s smaller sister is thought to have had (just like our own planet) liquid water in a past warmer state. Early observations of the red planet, revealed channels which the researchers thought to be signs of civilization, only to discover later that they were in fact remnants of proof that Mars had liquid water in the past. Most of the water now present of Mars is frozen under its dusty surface or at the polar ... [read more >>]
	29 October 2007, 05:31GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Enigma of the Saturn Ring's Origin Solved
	Saturn is the second planet in size in the Sun System, with a diameter 10 times that of the Earth, but the gas giant is famous for its beautiful ring, whose origin remains an enigma. The ring comprises floating wide, flat discs of ice, varying in size from dust to over 10 ft (3 m) across. Some believe they rooted in the same gas and dust that formed the planet, others think that the ring's icy chunks are pieces of moons resulted f ... [read more >>]
	25 October 2007, 03:53GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Surprises Coming from Jupiter
	New secrets of the giant gas planet have been exposed by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft during its recent flyby on the way towards the dwarf planet Pluto in 2015. New Horizons was sped on by Jupiter's gravity, saving years of its journey to the icy Pluto. This is the closest encounter with Jupiter since the Galileo mission, ended in September 2003. The biggest surprise has been the lack of tiny moonlets within the planet' ... [read more >>]
	10 October 2007, 03:45GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Will Comet Tail Cut Off During Sun Storm Turn it Dangerous to Earth?
	Something that was witnessed for the first time by astronomers wreaked havoc in space: the impact between a comet and a solar hurricane. The cosmic crash was captured by a NASA Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) satellite on April 20 and cut off the Encke comet's plasma tail while moving within Mercury's orbit. "We were awestruck when we first saw these images. The surprise of seeing the disconnec ... [read more >>]
	08 October 2007, 03:34GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Formation of an Earth-like Planet Detected!
	How did the Earth form? Astronomers have detected a "cooking" process for an Earth-like planet. The huge ring of hot dust surrounding a sun-size star 424 light-years away could be shaped into an Earth-like planet in a time period of maximum 100 million years. The team investigating the infrared light coming from the star HD 113766 found a belt of dust and probably rock, the key raw materials necessary to create a pla ... [read more >>]
	05 October 2007, 05:51GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

A Hybrid Asteroid-Comet
	This weird space object observed repeatedly plunging close to the Sun has been puzzling astronomers: is it a comet or an asteroid? Now, it seems like a comet playing the asteroid. P/2007 R5 was first detected passing near the Sun in 1999 and spotted again in 2003 by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. Sebastian Hoenig of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, realized it could have been the ... [read more >>]
	27 September 2007, 05:27GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Images Dismiss the Ever Presence of Liquid Water on Mars
	Just when everybody was so excited about recent theories of a former watery Mars, on the contrary, new images of this planet reveal a drier planet, contradicting the so-called geologic records of liquid water near the planet's surface. "It has always been highly unlikely, because it would be hard to maintain liquid water [in the Martian environment]. Now it appears even less likely." said lead researcher Alfred McEwen at ... [read more >>]
	24 September 2007, 03:29GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

New Surprises Coming from Venus
	Surprises keep coming from Venus, exposed by Venus Express, which by now has completed 500 tours around the planet in 500 Earth days. The spacecraft maintains excellent conditions, it even receives four times more sun radiation than Mars Express, as the spacecraft design seems to be the right one. With each new orbiting, the board instruments are switched on and off, shifting modes and targets and the spacecraft monitors its subsys ... [read more >>]
	04 September 2007, 06:56GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Earthlike Planet Discovered!
	There were no little green creatures what astronomers discovered, but a burned out white dwarf star with what was left from an Earthlike planet orbiting it. The chemical fingerprinting revealed that these are the remains of a system very similar to the Sun's, and gives hope that these could be common across the Universe. Now, we just have to detect them before supernova explosions turn them into space junk. The white ... [read more >>]
	20 August 2007, 06:54GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Amazing: The Biggest Planet Ever Found
	A newly discovered planet proved to be the biggest known planet outside of the Solar System. The new planet is located in the Hercules constellation and it was a surprise even for the astronomers. "We continue to be surprised by how relatively large these giant planets can be," says Francis O'Donovan. The planet is about 70 % larger than Jupiter, which is the largest planet in our Solar System, and has a smaller ... [read more >>]
	10 August 2007, 05:09GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Back on Track on the Red Planet
	The two Mars exploration rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, are each about the size of a golf cart. Their six-wheel undercarriages are designed in such a way as to allow a rover to climb over small rocks, and rotate in place. Lately, dust storms threatened to kill one of NASA's Mars rovers and stopped its twin in its tracks. A slight clearing of still-dusty Martian skies has improved the energy situation for both Spirit and ... [read more >>]
	09 August 2007, 09:03GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Sun Saga
	'Red giants' are evolved giant stars of 1000 times the volume of the Sun and with a surface temperature of 2,500 to 3,500 °C. In about five billion years, the sun will become a red giant and the planets that are the closest to the Sun (including Earth) will be burnt away. A recent survey of red giant stars that host planets showed that giant alien worlds may form far more readily than previously suspected. It is a w ... [read more >>]
	09 August 2007, 06:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Will We Be Extinct in 12 Million Years?
	There are immediate dangers menacing the human civilization, like terrorism and climate change. We may struggle to fight these issues which are in the end caused by the human race. But what can we do against the Universe? In May 2007, a team led by Mikhail Medvedev at the University of Kansas emitted a novel theory aimed to explain the periodicity of mass extinctions on Earth, which occur about once every 62 million years. &q ... [read more >>]
	07 August 2007, 14:06GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Planet with Four Sunsets
	It's a common sight in numerous science fiction stories and movies: a planet with two suns (often of drastically different colors) producing double shadows, multiple sunrises and sunsets and other exotic phenomena that would appear utterly alien to us Earthlings, like Luke Skywalker's home planet, Tatooine. Now astronomers may have discovered a beautiful quadruple star system that has not two, but four sunsets and s ... [read more >>]
	26 July 2007, 03:32GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What's With this Strange Asteroid Following Mars Around?
	Astronomers have just discovered another unusual celestial body in our solar system. It's a small asteroid, only 1 kilometer across that seems to follow Mars during its rotation cycle around the Sun. This is the first object of its kind to show this unusual movement. Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped. Initial theories said it may have been part of the Trojan asteroids, a large ... [read more >>]
	24 July 2007, 05:13GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Venus Will Soon Disappear from the Night Sky
	Venus, or the Evening Star, as it is popularly known, will disappear from the night sky near the end of the month, depriving us of the brightest celestial body. Now it reaches its maximum brightness shortly before sunrise or shortly after sunset, but it will go below the horizon in less than three weeks. Being the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon (more than 13 times brighter than Sirius), it reaches a maximum a ... [read more >>]
	14 July 2007, 06:57GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Giant Extrasolar Planets Found to Form Only Close to Their Stars
	Giant planets made of gas are the easiest to find outside our solar system, and more than 230 of them, many times larger than our champion, Jupiter, have been found in recent years. While extrasolar planets in general are hard to spot because light bouncing off these planets is easily lost in the sea of brightness generated by the star around which it orbits, actually seeing smaller ones is far more difficult, because it' ... [read more >>]
	13 July 2007, 11:12GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

First Proof of Water Vapor in the Atmosphere of a Giant Extrasolar Planet
	For the first time in history, an alien planet outside our solar system is proven to have water in its atmosphere. Previous theories said water vapor should be present in the atmospheres of nearly all the known extrasolar planets. Curiously, water was thought to be found in the atmosphere of one of the giant's neighbors, but further studies dismissed the claim. The fact that the next planet to be analyzed really does con ... [read more >>]
	12 July 2007, 02:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

People Could Live on Mars by the End of the Century
	A group of scientists calls for an innovative project to terraform the Red Planet by the end of this century, so that people will be able to live and work on its surface. This technique has been presented in sci-fi productions for some time and could be put in practice by the end of the 21st century. Terraforming literally means "Earth-shaping" and it's a process where a planet resembling Earth in physical com ... [read more >>]
	26 June 2007, 03:38GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Can Astronomers Calculate the Atmosphere of an Extrasolar Planet?
	Finding a planet beyond our solar system is pretty difficult, because they don't give off light and are eclipsed by the stars around which they orbit. Then how can astronomers find out if such a planet has atmosphere and what is this made of? For example, recently, the whole scientific community was ecstatic because of the discovery of the most Earth-like planet ever spotted, then thought to have perfect conditions for water, an es ... [read more >>]
	20 June 2007, 11:41GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Extrasolar Planet Most Likely to Have Life Is an Oven, Now Cinderella Sister Carries the Hope
	Scientists around the world are disappointed, because the extrasolar planet that was the most likely to have liquid water on its surface, the key ingredient for life, has been found to be a boiling world, where water could never exist in its liquid state. The planet is the most Earth-like ever spotted and was thought to have perfect conditions for water, an essential ingredient for life. Researchers detected the planet orbiti ... [read more >>]
	19 June 2007, 03:33GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

The Grim Fate of Pluto
	Pluto is the ninth planet of our solar system, the smallest and the farthest. No, wait, it's not a planet anymore. Trouble never seems to end for this little fellow, after the "embarrassment" of being degraded to a lower rank. The former planet has been dissed again. As it turns out, it's not even the biggest in the new class of dwarf planets it's been degraded to, it's just the second in command ... [read more >>]
	15 June 2007, 02:48GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Hidden Planet Forms Strange Elliptical Ring of Dust around a Star
	The formation of a star is a long process in which dense parts of molecular clouds collapse into a ball of plasma, triggering the birth of the sun. Stellar evolution begins with a giant molecular cloud, also known as a stellar nursery. Dust clouds surround the young stars and thin out and dissipate as the star reaches maturity, becoming rings in their final stages. Astronomers found a strange-looking star, that doesn't h ... [read more >>]
	14 June 2007, 14:01GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

Mars Really Had Liquid Water!
	Mars is a frigid desert and has a thin atmosphere and surface features reminiscent both of the impact craters of the Moon and the volcanoes, valleys, deserts and polar ice caps of Earth. This week, a team of scientists discovered the most compelling evidence of liquid water on Mars. What happened to the lost oceans of Mars and Venus? So far, they don't exactly know, but they found evidence of an ancient ocean on the pla ... [read more >>]
	14 June 2007, 03:55GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

How Would You Greet Aliens?
	Now there's an interesting question. What would you do if you knew there are really extraterrestrial beings out there? I think it all depends on how exactly we will find out, but any scenario of this kind will be the breaking news of all history. I'm sure many of you are convinced aliens are really out there, and it's not only the sci-fi movies that strongly promote this idea. Hey, even I believe in the probability of ex ... [read more >>]
	09 June 2007, 07:08GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

When Could We Meet the Aliens?
	This morning, a group of astronomers attended a round-table discussion in London, with the UK science minister Malcolm Wicks, titled "Is there life out there? Other Earth-like or Habitable planets." They boldly predict that we'll find life on Mars in the year 2015, and life in other solar systems in 2020. I don't know if their predictions are so accurate because they already know something we don't, but if we l ... [read more >>]
	06 June 2007, 08:18GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia

What Would Happen if the Entire Population of China Jumped at Once?
	The question is not as silly as it looks, actually. Oscillations are present in many physical processes and sometimes they can have impressive consequences. They occur not only in physical systems but also in biological systems and in human society. For example, earthquakes are one of the most destructive oscillations known to man. They result from the sudden release of stored energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves ... [read more >>]
	06 June 2007, 06:05GMT | (c) 2008 Softpedia