Content tagged "habitable zone".
5 items (5 articles, 0 stories)
GJ 3378 b, a super-Earth found 25 light-years away, sits right in the middle of its habitable zone, soaking up about 90% as much starlight as Earth gets from the Sun. But the real test for finding life isn't distance — it's whether a planet can hold onto its atmosphere. SORABUMI explains the new yardstick astronomers call the cosmic shoreline.
Astronomers have discovered a super-Earth orbiting the red dwarf Ross 318, a mere 28 light-years from Earth. With six times our planet's mass, it sits inside the habitable zone where liquid water could exist — and hints of an atmosphere make it one of the most compelling nearby finds in years.
M-type dwarf stars — red dwarfs — make up more than 70% of all stars in the galaxy. They're small, long-lived, and surrounded by rocky planets. So why are they so hostile to life? SORABUMI breaks down the battle between stellar flares and planetary atmospheres.
The 'habitable zone' gets thrown around a lot in exoplanet news. But it's never just about distance. Atmosphere, magnetic fields, rotation, and hidden subsurface oceans beyond the zone entirely — here's what conditions for life actually look like, explained with diagrams.
With more than 6,000 confirmed exoplanets, have we found a second Earth? We break down what the habitable zone actually means, how similarity is measured, and how the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is about to change the search.