The first planet ever found orbiting another star was detected in 1995, and it belonged to a class now known as a “hot Jupiter.” These exoplanets are comparable in mass to Jupiter but circle their stars in just a few days. Scientists now believe that hot Jupiters originally formed far from their stars, similar to Jupiter in our Solar System, and later moved inward.
Two main processes have been proposed to explain this journey: high-eccentricity migration, where gravitational interactions with other objects distort a planet’s orbit before tidal forces near the star gradually make it circular; and disk migration, in which a planet slowly spirals inward while embedded in the protoplanetary disk of gas and dust.
In a finding that echoes science fiction, astronomers at Northwestern University have captured a direct image of an exoplanet that orbits two stars, similar to the fictional world of Tatooine.
Directly imaging a planet beyond our solar system is uncommon on its own, but spotting one that revolves around a pair of suns is far more unusual. This newly identified planet stands out even among those rare cases. It travels closer to its two host stars than any other directly imaged planet found in a binary star system and sits six times nearer to its suns than comparable exoplanets discovered so far.
This observation gives scientists a valuable new way to study how planets form and move in systems with more than one star. By watching how the planet and its stars interact, researchers can better test and refine models of planetary formation under complex gravitational conditions.
If you feel a thrill every time we discover something new about the cosmos, then November 25th may have been a noteworthy day to you. That’s the day that NASA completed assembly of the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope.
The two main segments of the powerful space telescope were joined together in the large clean room at Goddard Space Flight Center that day. This means that the telescope is on track for launch as early as Fall 2026.
The Roman is an infrared telescope that’s set to become a flagship in the telescope fleet. It has only two instruments, the Wide-Field Instrument (WFI) and the Coronagraph Instrument (CGI).
Although they are technically gas giants, Uranus and Neptune are referred to as “ice giants” due to their composition.
This refers to the fact that Uranus and Neptune have more methane, water, and other volatiles than their larger counterparts (Jupiter and Saturn).
Given the pressure conditions in the planets’ interiors, these elements become solid, essentially becoming ‘ices.’
Scientists have used a specially engineered virus to help track the brain changes caused by psilocybin in mice, revealing how the drug could be breaking loops of depressive thinking.
This may explain why psilocybin keeps showing positive results for people with depression in clinical trials.
“Rumination is one of the main points for depression, where people have this unhealthy focus, and they keep dwelling on the same negative thoughts,” says Cornell University biomedical engineer Alex Kwan.
