Questions tagged [exoplanet]
Questions regarding planets outside of Earth's solar system.
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Can a meteor shower have a interval greater than 1 year?
Most meteor showers are yearly events. In the manga "SoSo no Frieren" the characters experience a meteor shower that happens only once every fifty years. The story does not take place on ...
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Most accurate method to find exoplanets?
NASA has found thousands of exoplanets in space using their powerful telescopes. How exactly does NASA do so and what is the best method? I'm assuming that NASA uses some sort of sensor to detect ...
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What are opinions of most planetary scientists on this study (link below), were there already some complex reviews in scientific journals? [closed]
I remember this two year old article from Universe Today https://www.universetoday.com/144402/science-fiction-might-be-right-after-all-there-might-be-breathable-atmospheres-across-the-universe/ about ...
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Exoplanet orbitable in permanent umbra?
Does any planet, or Kuiper Belt Object, or exoplanet measured or surmised, orbit its star either fast enough, or slow enough and thus distantly enough to cast a long enough shadow,
for a spacecraft to ...
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How to obtain salt from exoplanets
Is there any way to artificially make salts for humans colonizing planets on a long term basis?
It is given that the exoplanet has a water source. So do we hope for the best that it has salt present ...
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Agriculture on an exoplanet
If we find a hypothetical Earth-like planet A with a rocky terrain that we could colonize, how would we go about planting the first plants, knowing that there is a deficient of nutrients and the ...
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What will (likely) be the first separately-orbiting coronagraph to be deployed in space?
Traditionally a coronagraph is something that blocks the bright disk of our Sun to make it easier to image the much dimmer corona. The first coronagraph is of course the Moon; during a solar eclipse ...
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Any star-system list indexed by proximity?
Does anyone know where I can find a list indexed by Earth-proximity with all the star-systems or exo-planets with appropriate conditions for human direct exploration?
It is not necessary to have ...
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Future plans and advances for improved extrasolar planet imaging; has anything changed since 2019?
I have seen What is the state of the art of exosolar planet imaging in 2019? but answers there simply address the types and quality of images.
Here I'd like to ask about plans for future technology to ...
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Do black holes emit enough heat to heat a planet? [closed]
Under what circumstances can a blackhole emit enough heat to allow life on an orbiting planet?
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Apsis suffix for object orbiting an exoplanet
Is there already an agreed upon apsis suffix for an object orbiting an exoplanet? I don't think it's super likely that there is, as I don't think any moons have been discovered (or at least not at a ...
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What radio signals have NASA transmitted to outside our solar system?
What radio signal have NASA transmitted to outside our solar system and what did they contain?
user36677
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Why are all possibly habitable exoplanets higher mass than Earth?
I have been writing a scifi book in which I wanted to include real stars and planets as locations. It was simple enough to find a chart on Wikipedia that lists possibly habitable exoplanets, but I ...
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Are there any modern studies for how to colonize an exoplanet involving interstellar travel?
As in the title, are there any modern studies for how to colonize an exoplanet involving manned interstellar travel?
By this I mean an academic peer reviewed study. However, it doesn't have to be ...
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What is the most accepted explanation to the Fermi paradox by the scientific community? [closed]
If there is no "most accepted" explanation, then what would be the most scientifically probabilistic explanation to the Fermi paradox?
The Fermi paradox, named after Italian-American physicist ...
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What fraction of stellar systems could/can Kepler and TESS search for planets?
Since Kepler and TESS search for exoplanets by their transit in front of their host stars, they can only find planets around stars whose ecliptic plane is nearly edge-on as seen from Earth. (Ref 1 &...
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Which of the upcoming space missions has the greatest chance of proving the existence of life on exoplanets?
Confirming the existence of life on other distant planets would be one of the greatest discoveries in our history. I believe that many space enthusiasts would love this to happen in the coming decades....
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Could the James Webb Space Telescope detect chlorophyll on a exoplanet?
Say there's an exoplanet identical to Earth 20 light years away, and also assume it orbits at an angle so that it transits its star when seen from our solar system. Would the JWST be able to detect ...
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Is it possible to force atmosphere onto a non atmospheric planet?
If you had some way of injecting large masses of gas into a small planets gravitational field, would it form an atmosphere?
You would have to pump it at an extreme rate but would it still work if the ...
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Alternatives to an ozone layer
Our home planet earth has low concentration of ozone in its atmosphere, protecting it from UV radiation, could Exoplanets share the same method but have a different gas in the atmosphere which has a ...
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Dark side of an exoplanet - if it was earth-like would its surface light be detectable?
The Kepler telescope looks at dark sides of exoplanets.
If the exoplanet was earth-like would it not have emitted light? Would those lights be detectable, or what technological advances would be ...
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What is the state of the art of exosolar planet imaging in 2019?
I have seen this question from 2013 asking if it's possible to take pictures of extrasolar planets. But I am wondering if anything has changed since then. Have we taken higher quality images of other ...
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Why a polar orbit for TWINKLE?
TWINKLE will use a 0.45 meter telescope to record spectra of stars transited by their exoplanets. By looking at tiny changes in the spectrum as the planet's atmosphere moves in front of the star, they ...
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If humans move to different solar systems will they eventually evolve into different species? [closed]
I once read an argument against space settlement in a newspaper that said that if humans move to different systems eventually they will evolve into different species, or their cultures and beliefs ...
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How to calculate density of unknown planet?
Having approached an unknown planet, a
spaceship went in a low circular orbit. Would
astronauts be able to determine the average
density of the planets using only a watch
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Can we make super-massive Telescopes to image exoplanets?
This question has already been partly addressed here: When will we have the technology to directly observe an exoplanet with significant clarity?
However, my question is focused more on the ...
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What is the origin of Black knight satellite? [closed]
Is it true that an extraterrestrial satellite orbits earth in retrograde? If the Black knight exists, can we presume that it is placed there by aliens who are technologically more advanced than ...
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Are images of exoplanets' surfaces technically possible?
While already even taking an image of an extra solar planet sounds like science fiction to me, is it technically possible by what we know now to take also more detailed images of extraterrestrial ...
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can we estimate the number of habitable planets within a specified distance from Earth?
For the purposes of this question, I will define "habitable" as:
rocky composition like Earth
about the same surface gravity as Earth (about 1 G)
orbiting a relatively quiet star, like our Sun
far ...
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Why would Kepler rotate towards Earth to transfer data?
A question from here: "Why would Kepler rotate towards Earth instead of having an antenna always directed to Earth"?
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Could a 21 meter space telescope detect the nearest exoplanets?
For reference, Hubble's mirror is 2.4 meters wide, the upcoming James Webb's 6.5 meters, and the proposed ATLAST 8 or 16 meters. Let's assume a mirror nearly ten times Hubble's size, 21 meters, is ...
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Can there be an atmosphere in a cave on an atmosphere-less planet?
I am making an exoplanet for a game and was wondering whether a planet without an atmosphere (or at least with a very weak atmosphere) could support caves that do have an atmosphere, or whether the ...
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The physics behind the Starshade
The Starshade is a space telescope with a large occulter that can fly off and block the light of a star so its telescope can picture the surrounding exoplanets:
I ...
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Are there orbits for a starshade and a telescope to stay linear to an interstellar object?
Does there exist two orbits synchronized so that a telescope in one would line up with a star shade in the other on a line pointing to a certain star? And this during a period of time relevant for ...
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Could a terrestrial planet with a hydrogen atmosphere be habitable?
Many exoplanets, even small ones, have densities so low that it indicates that they have hydrogen atmospheres. Is a hydrogen gas atmosphere of a terrestrial planet somehow detrimental to biology as we ...
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Smallest planet where human type life could evolve and survive?
Most exoplanets making the news are larger than Earth. I wonder about the smaller worlds, how small is too small? Reword to keep the question narrow enough to be answerable.
When the Earth was ...
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When will we be able to conclusively confirm or disprove Bode's law?
I am reading Heinlein's Time for the Stars(1956) and some of the characters are very excited about confirming Bode's law.
The formula suggests that, extending outward, each planet would be ...
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Why is TRAPPIST-1f considered habitable?
The TRAPPIST-1f is in the TRAPPIST-1 system discovered recently with seven planets. Three of them are said to be in the habitable zone. But the data says that the average temperature on the TRAPPIST-...
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Resonances and the seven sisters recently discovered
In reference to the discovery of seven planets around Trappist-1, I'm just wondering if any of these planets are in an orbital resonance and if that is the case, what the implications for habitability ...
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What are the chances of life on 7 Earth-like exoplanets discovered by NASA? [closed]
NASA has announced the discovery of 7 Earth-like exoplanets 13 hours ago. What are the chances of life there? Is it possible to see the ground of these planets from here? How far are they?
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A Jupiter-sized star?
TRAPPIST-1 is described as "Jupiter-sized" (comparable radius), although at 8% of the Sun's mass, must be on the order of 100x greater (Jupiter : Sun is about 1 : 1000). This seems paradoxical and ...
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Exoplanet(s) that share orbit?
Has Kepler (or any other survey) found an exoplanet with a similar orbit as another exoplanet around the same star?
The current IAU definition of a planet requires that "a planet has cleared its ...
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Would an interstellar exoplanet telescope make sense?
Since the transit method of detecting exoplanets requires perfect alignment of orbits, would a Kepler-type telescope yield more exoplanet detections if sent out of our solar system even to relatively ...
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The gases of technology [closed]
Ask around and find out what gases, vapors, and/or fumes, in the atmosphere are the result of advanced technology. Then use a spectroscopy to look for those compounds in the atmospheres of earth like ...
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Could a rogue planet's moons harbor life?
Because stars kill stuff with radiation, flares, etc, then die taking planets with them, might it not be easier for living things to live on a rogue planet's moon? Say you had a rogue Jupiter-like ...
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For one way missions to any planet is it planned to pay astronauts? [closed]
As one way missions astronauts would never come back (because it's a real one way mission with a many years trip), is it planed to pay them or giving them enough hardware, tools, food is their salary ?...
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What exoplanet atmospheres might support life beside our nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere? [closed]
What exoplanet atmospheres might support life beside our nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere?
Related question: Could an exoplanet atmosphere be very similar to our own, but contain some component toxic ...
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What is the potential limit extraterrestrial life can survive and under what factors?
A lot of material about extraterrestrial life seems to suggest that life essentially cannot survive in environments with more radiation beyond what's on Earth. For example, when red dwarfs planets are ...
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Which of the planets could we detect today from just the movements of the sun?
Assume that despite our current level of space exploration and technology, we have somehow missed the existence of the other planets in our solar system.
We have developed various methods of ...
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Are exoplanets in the habitable zone suitable for human colonization?
If they found the those planets in the habitable zone, are they planning ahead for human settlement of them?
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