The atmosphere of a planet holds the keys to make it habitable, so we need to look at them to figure if exoplanets are habitable. They are too far to send probes to measure them directly like we do with Mars or Jupiter’s moons, but scientists can study them from right here, looking at how they block light.
It’s not all about location: planets need a lot of things to go right to harbor life. Continue reading What makes a planet habitable
Think about it: the idea that the Sun is essentially the same thing as any star doesn’t make any sense. I mean, just look at them, they could hardly be more different! So how the heck do you go about proving such an outrageous idea? Well, it’s been quite a long journey, that started from a number of guesses by ancient “scientists”. Granted, some of them turned out relatively correct, … Continue reading A star like any other?
Most predictions for the winners of this years Nobel prize for physics point to the biggest piece of science news we’ve had: gravitational waves. I’ll go out on a limb and say that I’m not convinced they will. Don’t get me wrong: I’m a great fan of team LIGO’s work, too. The discovery of gravitational waves was incredible, but so was the Higgs boson. LIGO … Continue reading What if gravitational waves don’t win the Nobel prize?
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