Five exoplanet stories from 2014

Monday, December 29, 2014 - 16:16 YT&Twebzine

Could distant planets support life?

We’re still nearly two decades away from traveling to Mars. Even so, during the past year, researchers have used an arsenal of space observatories to spot Earth-like planets – and to eliminate a long-standing myth.

In February, NASA’s Kepler mission announced the discovery of 715 planets.The newly verified worlds orbit 305 stars, revealing multiple-planet systems much like ours.

Here are five exoplanet stories from 2014:

1. A wobbly planet: A world found by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler space telescope wobbles wildly on its spin axis much like a child's top, the space agency announced in February. The tilt of the planet's spin axis can vary by as much as 30 degrees over 11 years, leading to rapid and erratic changes in seasons. In contrast, Earth's rotational precession is 23.5 degrees over 26,000 years.

2. Nemesis no more: After searching hundreds of millions of objects across the sky, NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) turned up no evidence of the hypothesized Planet X -- a large but unseen celestial body suspected to lie beyond the orbit of Pluto, scientists said in March. Too bad, too: The planet’s nicknames -- Nemesis and Tyche – were straight out of Hollywood.

3. Earth’s cousin: During a press conference in April, scientists spoke of a planet approximately the size of ours orbiting the habitable zone of its star. Dubbed Kepler 186f, the planet is 500 light-years away.

4. Jumbo Earth: Researchers from the University of New South Wales in Australia announced that they had spotted a large Earth-like planet that orbits a red dwarf star. The supersized planet is much like ours but with a mass five times as large, the university’s news office reported in June.

5. Grad student spots hot planet: A graduate student using data from the Kepler spacecraft identified a new exoplanet, NASA announced in December. The planet, designated HIP 116454b, is too hot for life as we know it. It is two and a half times larger than Earth and follows a nine-day orbit around a star that is smaller and cooler than our sun. The planet and star are 180 light-years from Earth.