Alien planet lashed by huge flares from its ‘angry beast’ star

July 8, 2025 12:19 PM

Alien planet lashed by huge flares from its ‘angry beast’ star

Scientists are tracking a large gas planet experiencing quite a quandary as it orbits extremely close to a young star - a predicament never previously observed. This exoplanet, as planets beyond our solar system are called, orbits its star so tightly that it appears to trigger flares from the stellar surface - larger than any observed from the sun - reaching several million miles (km) into space that over time may strip much of this unlucky world's atmosphere. The phenomenon appears to be caus...

Scientists find strongest evidence yet of life on an alien planet

April 17, 2025 9:42 AM

Scientists find strongest evidence yet of life on an alien planet

In a potential landmark discovery, scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope have obtained what they call the strongest signs yet of possible life beyond our solar system, detecting in an alien planet's atmosphere the chemical fingerprints of gases that on Earth are produced only by biological processes. The two gases - dimethyl sulfide, or DMS, and dimethyl disulfide, or DMDS - involved in Webb's observations of the planet named K2-18 b are generated on Earth by living organisms, primari...