A distant star system with four super-sized gas giants has revealed a surprise. Thanks to JWST’s powerful vision, astronomers detected sulfur in their atmospheres — a chemical clue that they formed ...

A mysterious object has caused a long-lasting and extreme dimming of a distant star, but is this object a 'failed star' brown dwarf, or an exceptionally massive super-Jupiter exoplanet?

The planet is one of the best worlds for follow-up studies to determine whether it could be habitable or not.

General relativity helps explain the lack of planets around tight binary stars by driving orbital resonances that eject or destroy close-in worlds. This process naturally creates a “desert” of ...

The combustible sedimentary rock, better known as coal, was not only crucial to the onset of advanced technology here on Earth, but it should also be key to the development of advanced E.T.s residing ...

Key takeawaysIf a gas giant planet is big enough to ignite deuterium fusion, it becomes a brown dwarf instead of a planet.

Astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets around single stars, but few around binary stars—even though both types of stars are equally common. Physicists can now explain the dearth.

If a gas giant planet is big enough to ignite deuterium fusion, it becomes a brown dwarf instead of a planet. But this definition is incomplete and does not tell us how gas giants form or what ...

With this new survey, astronomers have gained a peek inside a stage of exoplanet system formation they have yet to fully ...

Gas giants are enormous planets made primarily of hydrogen and helium. They may contain dense central cores, but unlike Earth, they do not have solid ...

Astronomers have identified a newly discovered exoplanet that may orbit within the outer edge of its star's habitable zone, raising fresh questions about how common potentially life-supporting worlds ...

One such mystery, described in a recent paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, concerns circumbinary exoplanets—or rather, the shortage thereof—in the now 6,000+ exoplanets confirmed to date.