“Understanding how Earth regulates climate both in the modern era but also in the distant past is critical for our understanding of planetary habitability,” said Noah Planavsky, a biogeochemist at Yale University. “This will help guide our search for life beyond our solar system and is an example of how the evolution of complex life fundamentally changed our planet.”
Avi Shporer, Research Scientist, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. A Google Scholar, Avi was formerly a NASA Sagan Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). His motto, not surprisingly, is a quote from Carl Sagan: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
Our Universe provided some fascinating news stories over the past few days, ranging from Antimatter Stars of the Milky Way to Can Early Dark Energy Save the Universe to Our Weird Solar System.
“The tiny star TOI-270 (less than half the size and temperature of our Sun) hosts one super-Earth and two sub-Neptunes. In our solar system, there is absolutely nothing that resembles such intermediate planets, with a size and composition somewhere in the middle of Earth and Neptune (4 Earth radii); we directly jump from rocky worlds (like Earth) to gas-dominated worlds (like Neptune),” astrophysicist Maximilian Gunther, an ESA Fellow at the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC), told The Daily Galaxy.
Another week of amazing news from our Pale Blue Dot, with stories ranging from strange things are happening at the outer edges of our solar system to plants feel pain and might even see to a wrinkle in nature could lead to alien life.
Using Hubble Space Telescope ultraviolet data, researchers have identified the first signature of carbon ions surrounding exoplanet HAT-P-11b, a Neptune-sized planet 123 light-years from Earth. The charged carbon ions trace the extent of the exoplanet’s magnetosphere, which is sculpted by the host star’s stellar wind.
In 2019 the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz for pioneering a new field in astronomy with the discovery of the first planet beyond our solar system, 51 Pegasi b. Since the discovery in 1991, over 4,000 exoplanets have been found in our home galaxy. “We answered a very old question,” Mayor said, which was debated by philosophers since the ancient Greeks: “are there other worlds in the Universe?”
Violent Neutron Star Collision Discovered Near Earth’s Birthplace (Weekend Feature)
Alien Octopus Hypothesis (YouTube Video)
“The Exoplanet Paradox” -Worlds With Low Oxygen May Be Teeming with Life Based on Early Earth History
Astronomers Share Their Hopes for the JWST to Will Tardigrades Be the First Interstellar Travelers? (Today’s Galaxy Report)
Monster Black Hole in Tiny Galaxy Holds Clues to Their Existence in Early UniverseCarbon Isotopes on Mars Could Be From Ancient Life to Is Pluto a Planet Debate Continues (Today’s Galaxy Report)
Venus Could Have Been Habitable and Radically Different from the Planet We See Today
The Death of Mars (YouTube Episode)
Why are NASA Spaceships Exploring Earth’s Deepest Oceans to Is Reality a Wavefunction? (Planet Earth Report)
Harvard Astronomers on the ‘Detective Story’ of a 1,000-Light-Year-Wide Bubble Surrounding Earth 
