“For the first time ever, astronomers used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to take a direct image of a planet outside our solar system.”
Exoplanets
At Mind Matters News: News from the search for extraterrestrial life 2
One reason for hope for finding life elsewhere in the universe is that the universe appears to be fine-tuned for life. What the universe won’t do is tell us where the life is.
At Science Daily: Super-Earth skimming habitable zone of red dwarf
“A super-Earth planet has been found near the habitable zone of a red dwarf star only 37 light-years from the Earth.”
At Mind Matters News: Exoplanets: Life forms made one third of Earth’s minerals
If life is “a cosmic imperative that emerges on any mineral- and water-rich world,” say the researchers, then life emerged early on Earth along with minerals.
Webb: WASP-96b the most detailed spectrum of an exoplanet atmosphere
“NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has demonstrated its unprecedented ability to analyse the atmosphere of a planet more than 1,000 light-years away.”
Astronomers mining an increasingly rich trove of TESS exoplanet data
As reported in Astronomy Now, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has now identified more than 5,000 possible exoplanet candidates – TESS Objects of Interest, or TOIs.
At Big Think: 5 ways the James Webb Space Telescope could change science forever
Ethan Siegel: Thanks to its unique, unprecedented capabilities, JWST might answer five currently open questions about the Universe in very surprising ways.
At Mind Matters News: Among 5000 known exoplanets, there are some really strange ones
To sum up, whatever we see or read about planets in science fiction, something out there is likely stranger still. It will be most interesting to see how many of the more conventional exoplanets have life and if there is in fact a reliable formula for predicting it. Those who claim that Earth is just an ordinary planet are certainly wrong — but is Earth unique? The universe is fine-tuned, as is Earth, and that would be an argument for life on exoplanets.
At Mind Matters News: Former astronaut names planet he thinks most likely to have life
Chris Hadfield points to Kepler-442b as Earth-like but some researchers defend the possibility of life even on tidally locked planets, in “edge” zones.
At Mind Matters News, some fun: Recent science papers support science fiction premises
Of course, science can deal only in fact but many of the facts scientists are unearthing can support science fiction premises.
Researchers: Moons make planets habitable — but not all planets can have them
University of Rochester: The researchers found that rocky planets larger than six times the mass of Earth (6M) and icy planets larger than one Earth mass (1M) produce fully—rather than partially—vaporized disks, and these fully-vaporized disks are not capable of forming fractionally large moons.
An exotic exoplanet we might want to view up close through a telescope but not visit
At Phys.org: One particularly interesting substance the team found is a gas containing titanium: titanium oxide. While titanium oxide is very scarce on Earth, it could play an important role in the atmosphere of WASP-189b.
Here’s a new one for coffee hour: Rogue planets
At ScienceDaily: Rogue planets are elusive cosmic objects that have masses comparable to those of the planets in our Solar System but do not orbit a star, instead roaming freely on their own.
Rocky exoplanets turn out to feature exotic rocks
At ScienceDaily: “While some exoplanets that once orbited polluted white dwarfs appear similar to Earth, most have rock types that are exotic to our Solar System,” said Xu. “They have no direct counterparts in the Solar System.”
Three hundred new exoplanets found
Researchers: Studying such a large new group of bodies could help scientists better understand how planets form and orbits evolve, and it could provide new insights about how unusual our solar system is.