Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 13 May 2013 17:00:00 PDT Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101020/11575411511/dailydirt-life-other-planets.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101020/11575411511/dailydirt-life-other-planets.shtml abundant in the universe, but there's not that much hard evidence (yet!). Here are just a few astronomical discoveries that might encourage researchers to look for signs of life a bit more carefully.

• Exoplanets have been discovered circling some extremely old, metal-poor stars, creating interesting curiosities that might expand the theories of how planets form. These exoplanets might not harbor any kind of life... or we may want to get a bit more creative about how we envision life on other worlds. [url]
• A free-floating planet named CFBDSIR2149 is not orbiting a star, and it's only one of about two dozen or so known examples of a starless planet. This rogue planet is relatively young compared to the Earth, and some spectroscopic measurements suggest this planet's temperature is about 430° Celsius -- a bit too warm for our tastes (but maybe not for aliens?). [url]
• Within our own solar system, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected spurts of water from Saturn's moon Enceladus. This evidence leads to some speculation of a habitable zone on some icy moons where microbes might be able to survive. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

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]]> http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20101020/11575411511 Mon, 5 Mar 2012 17:00:00 PST Michael Ho http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120225/02042417880/dailydirt-rest-universe.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120225/02042417880/dailydirt-rest-universe.shtml

Nomad planets could be floating around our galaxy without orbiting a star in surprisingly large numbers. Based on some new estimates, there might be 100,000 times more nomad planets in the Milky Way than stars. [url]

The Hubble telescope has found a totally new class of planet that is made of an enormous amount of water. Given the density of this waterworld, GJ1214b has more water than Earth and much less rockiness. [url]

The Kepler Space Telescope has discovered over a thousand planets outside our solar system, and a few other star systems have interesting planetary orbit patterns. One "Kepler Object of Interest" (KOI) is a system in which there are planets that share the same orbit. In another KOI, all the planets circle their star in under a week. Strange, new worlds, indeed. [url]

To discover more links on space exploration, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

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