We all know that to have life on a world, you need three critical items: water, warmth, and food. Now add to that a factor called "entropy." It plays a role in determining if a given planet can ...

Does a planet just have to be in a star’s habitable zone to be habitable, or are other forces at play? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal hopes to address as a team of ...

Across the galaxy, astronomers now see that planetary systems fall into four broad classes, and our own solar system, part of the rare Ordered group, is only one of them. At the same time, discoveries ...

New research uses laboratory experiments to demonstrate that water is naturally created during the planet formation process. By squeezing and heating planetary analog materials between the tips of two ...

Hydrogen and helium atmospheres could keep exoplanets warm enough to be habitable for billions of years, even at huge distances from their stars. Astrobiologists normally think of the habitable zone ...