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Using the light-warping effects of gravity, astronomers have detected a massive object right in the center of our galaxy. The universe is teeming with cranky objects that simply don’t fall into certain categories, just like Pluto. Astronomers are dubious of what exactly this massive object is, named OGLE-2016-BLG-1190Lb , a huge star or a flunked star.  OGLE, 13 times the size of Jupiter orbiting a star about 22,000 light years away from Earth, is not as big as the record-breaking giant DENIS-P J082303.1-491201 b, which is 29 times the mass of Jupiter. NASA’s Spitzer has been set into Earth’s orbit around Sun since 2003 to find exoplanets, using Microlensing, which no one contemplated when it was first launched. Microlensing is comparatively an efficient technique for identifying details about stars, planets, and even galaxies. Gravity is the warping of space, which means a massive object can warp space into what is effectively a lens. The more conventional approach is to watch fo...

The existential notion of Earth-sized inhabitable exoplanets seems to be confronting our conventional understanding of the vast cosmos. However, the observations made by the Kepler spacecraft infer that one out of every five sun-like stars house an Earth-like planet within its “habitable zone” — area of space appropriately distanced from its host star likely to be comprising liquid water.  Observations made by Kepler, from its first mission, elucidates this possibility with the cutting-edge discovery of 20 potentially-habitable planets . The study is yet to be attested with further research and information, nevertheless it already seems to be quite promising. Of these 20 exoplanets, many orbit stars like the Sun. Among them, there’s a planet having the longest orbit and an extensive 395 Earth-day year, while the shortest orbits its star in 18 Earth-days. Other inhabitable planets orbiting smaller stars are found to have much shorter “years” than what was found within this Kepler d...

Astronomers have discovered a prodigious gas giant, named NGTS-1b, almost the size of Jupiter; gyrating a white dwarf half the mass and size of Sun, 600 light years from Earth. It is relatively the largest planet, compared to its star, ever found. This  discovery is big because it reveals more secrets and questions our current understanding of how planets formed. (University of Warwick/Mark Garlick) The discovery of NGTS-1b is a smash hit, confronting our current theories about planetary formation. Current theories about planetary formation don't allow for planets this size to be hanging around stars this small.  Planetary formation usually happens more slowly around small stars, and there's generally less material for such planets to form, so the gas giant in this case is certainly bewildering to what’s previously known. The chief researcher of the University of Warwick, Daniel Bayliss avows it as : "The discovery of NGTS-1b was a complete surprise to us - such massive p...

Almost 1 billion years from this moment, the sun will enter in its dying phase and blow off its outer atmosphere, eating our minute planet in hot plasma. Fortunately, our galaxy will be left with NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft to remember us as a sign of existence of humans. The two nuclear-powered spacecraft started their mission 40 years ago and became the first and only machines to take close-up photos of Uranus and Neptune, the planets' moons and rings, and some other objects in the outer solar system. The Voyagers are also carrying a golden record of sounds, images, and other info about existence of life on Earth — a simple human collection that aliens might one day discover and decode. The mission is now comprehensive in an extraordinary PBS documentary called " The Farthest ", which premiered on August 23 and re-aired on September 13 at 10 p.m. ET. Brad Smith, a Voyager imaging scientist, said in the movie "Fifty years from now, Voyager will be the science...