Extrasolar Planets News

October 31, 2026

Top Headlines

A Train Was Delayed by a Solar Storm. but Something Didn't Add Up.

Oct. 21, 2026 Scientists have cracked a 178-year-old mystery surrounding a train delayed by a solar storm, revealing that the famous incident happened in 1848 rather than 1841. The discovery rewrites the early history of space weather and highlights a threat that ...

Earth’s Center Is Moving, and NASA Just Measured It

Oct. 7, 2026 Earth’s center of mass is constantly on the move, shifting by a few millimeters as enormous amounts of water, ice, and even air migrate around the planet with the seasons. NASA scientists have developed a more precise way to track these tiny ...

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Launches to Reveal the Universe’s Darkest Secrets

Aug. 31, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has launched on a million mile journey to L2, where it will scan huge portions of the cosmos for clues about dark matter, dark energy, and distant worlds. With survey ...

NASA’s Roman Telescope Will See 100 Times More Sky Than Hubble

Aug. 28, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will combine Hubble-like detail with a field of view 100 times larger, giving astronomers a sweeping new way to explore the cosmos. Its observations could uncover hidden planets, map billions of cosmic objects, and ...

China’s Chang’e-6 Reveals Why Solar Wind Hits the Moon’s Two Sides Differently

July 21, 2026 China’s Chang’e-6 samples have uncovered a surprising difference between the Moon’s two hemispheres. Solar wind particles penetrated deeper into the far-side soil because Earth’s ...

A Shattered Asteroid May Have Bombarded Earth 800 Million Years Ago

July 18, 2026 A catastrophic asteroid breakup may have triggered a huge wave of impacts across the inner solar system about 800 million years ago. The debris was launched from near a gravitational gateway controlled by Jupiter, sending fragments toward Earth, the ...

Are There Aliens on Exoplanet K2-18b? Scientists Just Scanned It for Signals

July 14, 2026 K2-18b is one of the most promising worlds for the search for extraterrestrial life, so astronomers conducted an unusually powerful radio survey using both the VLA and MeerKAT telescopes. Advanced ...

The Galaxy’s Coldest “Stars” May Actually Be Alien Megastructures

July 10, 2026 Scientists have identified new clues that could help astronomers spot one of the most famous hypothetical alien megastructures: a Dyson sphere. The study finds that red dwarfs and white dwarfs are the most promising stars to examine, since advanced ...

Why Scientists Fear We're Missing Evidence of Extraterrestrial Life

June 29, 2026 Scientists are raising concerns that we may be overlooking evidence of extraterrestrial life even when it is present. Hidden biosignatures, limitations in detection technology, and assumptions about what life should look like can all create ...

Scientists Discover Towering Red Auroras Reaching Deep Into Space Above Japan

May 21, 2026 Mysterious red auroras spotted over Japan were found reaching astonishingly high altitudes, even during space storms considered relatively mild. The discovery suggests hidden solar activity may be ...

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Could Reveal Millions of Invisible Neutron Stars

May 15, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope could expose a vast hidden population of neutron stars lurking unseen across the Milky Way. By detecting subtle shifts in starlight caused by gravity, the mission may ...

Powerful AI Finds 100+ Hidden Planets in NASA Data Including Rare and Extreme Worlds

May 3, 2026 Astronomers have unleashed a powerful new AI tool called RAVEN to comb through data from NASA’s TESS mission—and it’s paying off in a big way. By analyzing millions of stars, the system has ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:52am EDT

Hubble Reveals a Stunning Twist in How the Universe Emerged from Darkness

Oct. 30, 2026 A surprising discovery by astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope is challenging a leading explanation for how the early universe emerged from a dense fog of hydrogen roughly 13 billion years ...

A Mysterious Star System Just 16 Light-Years Away May Be Hiding Habitable Planets

Oct. 29, 2026 Astronomers have solved a 170-year-old planetary mystery in a nearby two-star system, discovering that a mysterious wobble was caused by stellar ...

NASA Discovers Jupiter’s Invisible Shield Is More Complex Than Earth’s

Oct. 29, 2026 NASA’s Juno spacecraft has discovered that Jupiter uses a surprisingly complex system of powerful plasma waves and multiple shock regions to defend against the solar wind. The findings reveal major ...

James Webb Discovers a Scorching Lava Planet With a “giant Sunscreen”

Oct. 27, 2026 A scorching lava planet 280 light-years away has surprised astronomers by apparently maintaining a thick atmosphere despite conditions that should have stripped it away billions of years ago. James ...

A 2,700-Year-Old Solar Eclipse Just Revealed Something Surprising About Earth

Oct. 26, 2026 A solar eclipse recorded more than 2,700 years ago is revealing surprising secrets about Earth's rotation and the Sun's ancient behavior. By ...

Astronomers May Have Discovered the First Moon Beyond Our Solar System

Oct. 24, 2026 Astronomers have uncovered evidence of a bizarre, potentially historic discovery: the first moon ever detected beyond our Solar System. Unlike familiar moons, this mysterious object is at least as ...

NASA’s Asteroid Bennu Samples Reveal a 4.5-Billion-Year-Old Secret

Oct. 24, 2026 Tiny samples from asteroid Bennu are rewriting scientists' understanding of how our Solar System formed. New evidence suggests that Bennu was born where material from the inner and outer Solar System ...

Astronomers Uncover New Secrets of the Universe’s First Five Minutes

Oct. 20, 2026 Scientists have achieved a major breakthrough in understanding the Universe’s earliest moments, measuring the amount of helium formed in the first five minutes after the Big Bang with unprecedented ...

NASA Reveals 16 Stunning Galaxies Hiding Cosmic Chaos

Oct. 20, 2026 NASA's stunning new gallery of 16 galaxies reveals colossal black hole jets, explosive star formation, and spectacular cosmic collisions through the combined power of Chandra, James Webb, Hubble, and ...

Astronomers Discover a Ghostly Green Star Unlike Any Known Before

Oct. 19, 2026 Astronomers have uncovered a surprising rainbow of dead stars, including the first known star that would appear genuinely green to human eyes. Researchers found that white dwarfs can glow in ...

James Webb Reveals a Strange Bulge in an Alien Planet's Atmosphere

Oct. 16, 2026 Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered that a distant alien planet's atmosphere is surprisingly lopsided. Located 1,300 light-years away, the scorching gas giant ...

MIT Astronomers Catch a Star in a Feast That Could Last Billions of Years

Oct. 10, 2026 Astronomers have discovered a bizarre star system about 300 light-years from Earth where a small star is slowly devouring a nearby brown dwarf, an object too massive to be a planet but too small to ...

Hubble Space Telescope May Have Found a Planet Born After Its Star Died

Oct. 9, 2026 A strange chemical signature in old Hubble observations may point to a planet that formed after its star had already died. Astronomers found unusually high levels of niobium around the white dwarf HS ...

NASA’s Webb Finds Signs of Mars-Sized Worlds Smashing Together

Oct. 7, 2026 NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is giving astronomers a glimpse of the kinds of violent collisions that may have shaped our own solar system, including the giant impact thought to have created ...

Einstein Probe Reveals a Hidden Phase of Neutron Star Collisions

Oct. 8, 2026 Einstein Probe revealed nearly 10 minutes of soft X-ray activity following a short gamma-ray burst, exposing a phase of neutron star mergers that previous missions may have missed. The prolonged ...

ESA’s Juice Just Used Earth as a Slingshot to Jupiter

Oct. 3, 2026 ESA’s Juice spacecraft raced past Earth on September 28, using our planet’s gravity to dramatically reshape its path toward Jupiter without burning much fuel. The flyby changed its direction by ...

Webb Finds a Surprising Atmosphere on a Scorching Lava World

Oct. 7, 2026 The James Webb Space Telescope has found strong evidence that the rocky lava world HD 3167 b has an atmosphere, despite circling its star every 24 hours under extreme heat. The surprising discovery ...

These Massive Stars Could Explain Webb’s Strangest Galaxies

Sep. 24, 2026 Hubble observations of massive stars in metal-poor dwarf galaxies are revealing clues to why the early universe looks so unusual. Researchers found that stellar winds weaken sharply at extremely low ...

The Solar System Chose Fire Over Ice from the Very Beginning

Sep. 22, 2026 Ancient iron meteorites reveal that some of the Solar System’s first solid bodies were built mostly from tiny heat-forged rock beads called chondrules, while water-rich dust was largely excluded. ...

Astronomers Discover a Strange Universal Rule Behind Black Hole Eruptions

Oct. 16, 2026 Scientists have discovered that black holes of vastly different sizes appear to launch powerful jets according to the same universal rule. The breakthrough could explain why some black holes suddenly ...

NASA’s Webb Reveals the Wild Weather of a Mysterious World 20 Light-Years Away

Oct. 17, 2026 NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed that a turbulent world 20 light-years away has a surprisingly orderly weather system, with three recurring atmospheric states driven by temperature ...

Astronomers Just Found the Youngest Known Planet Ever

Sep. 17, 2026 Astronomers have confirmed a Jupiter-size planet less than a million years old, making Elias 2-24 b the youngest known planet and giving scientists a rare look at a world still being born. Its ...

JWST’s Mysterious Little Red Dots May Be Black Holes Growing at Incredible Speeds

Sep. 17, 2026 New supercomputer simulations suggest JWST’s puzzling Little Red Dots are rapidly growing black holes from the early Universe. Extreme radiation may have helped create unusually massive black hole ...

Venus May Have Swallowed Its Own Moon

Sep. 16, 2026 Venus may have once had a moon, but new research suggests the planet’s incredibly slow rotation could have doomed it. Computer simulations showed that instead of gradually drifting away like ...

James Webb Reveals Chariklo’s Mysterious Rings Are Changing Faster Than Expected

Sep. 15, 2026 The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed surprising changes in the rings around Chariklo, a small object orbiting between Saturn and Uranus. Over just a few years, its inner ring became more ...

The Moon May Have Formed Intact Just Hours After a Giant Collision

Sep. 9, 2026 Scientists have discovered that the Moon-forming collision may have depended heavily on how hot and physically strong early Earth and Theia were. New simulations found that some impacts create the ...

The Universe Has Plenty of Hydrogen. So Why Is Star Formation Collapsing?

Sep. 3, 2026 Star formation across the universe has fallen dramatically over the past 4.5 billion years, but astronomers have uncovered a surprising twist: the supply of neutral hydrogen, a key ingredient for ...

James Webb Reveals Why Planet Formation Is a Race Against Time

Sep. 28, 2026 JWST has revealed that young planetary systems lose their planet-building gas through a changing mix of powerful jets, molecular winds, and radiation-driven outflows. As the disks age and their gas ...

Ancient Meteorites Reveal a Powerful Force That Helped Build the Solar System

Sep. 24, 2026 Ancient grains inside one of the oldest known meteorites reveal that a surprisingly strong magnetic field existed during the solar system’s first 200,000 years. The discovery suggests magnetism ...

Earth May Have Lost the Sun’s Protective Shield Millions of Years Ago

Sep. 2, 2026 NASA-funded studies suggest Earth’s climate has been influenced by both the Sun’s travels through dense regions of the Milky Way and the violent superflares of its youth. Those events may help ...