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Search resuls for: "Kepler Space"


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Planets beyond our solar system have a size gap, where worlds seem to shrink past a certain range. Scientists think this is because some sub-Neptunes shrink — losing their atmospheres and speeding through the size gap until they are as small as a super-Earth. AdvertisementThe planets themselves may be pushing their atmospheres awayShrinking exoplanets may lack the mass (and therefore the gravity) to hold their atmospheres close. AdvertisementThe other hypothesis, called photoevaporation, says that a planet's atmosphere is dissipated by the radiation of its host star. AdvertisementThe scientists found that most of the planets there retained their atmosphere, making the core-powered mass loss a more likely cause of eventual atmosphere loss.
Persons: , Jessie Christiansen, Mark Garlick, NASA's, Christiansen Organizations: NASA, Service, JPL, Caltech, Kepler Space, Harvard
Astronomers using data obtained by NASA's now-retired Kepler space telescope have identified seven planets orbiting a star in our Milky Way galaxy, with all of them suffering the wrath of their star - radiant energy - even more brutally than Mercury. This is the second-most planets so far discovered around any star beyond our solar system. All seven are larger than Earth, the biggest of our solar system's four rocky planets, but littler than Neptune, the smallest of our solar system's four gas planets. Scientists have to date identified more than 5,500 exoplanets - planets outside our solar system - and spotted hundreds of stars with multiple exoplanets. "The chance of life on any of these seven planets is indeed pretty remote," Lissauer said.
Persons: NASA's, Jack Lissauer, Kepler, Lissauer, Will Dunham, Rosalba O'Brien Organizations: NASA's Ames Research Center, Planetary Science, Thomson Locations: California
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