College of Natural & Agricultural Sciences

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE - Just decades after the first exoplanets were identified, our database of the distant worlds—monitored by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute—has breached a new threshold. Now, astronomers have officially identified more than 6,000 planets outside our solar system. “This milestone represents decades of cosmic exploration driven by NASA space telescopes—exploration that has completely...

FORBES - NASA reports that its official tally of extrasolar planets has hit the 6,000 mark. This thirty-year milestone has been in the works since two little known Swiss astronomers, Michel Mayor and Didiez Queloz, first detected 51 Pegasi b. The first of the so-called “hot Jupiters” to be detected, “51 Peg” is a gas...

QUANTA MAGAZINE - enus is arguably the worst place in the solar system. A cloak of carbon dioxide suffocates the planet, subjecting its surface to skull-crushing pressure. Sulfuric acid rains down through the sickly yellow sky but never reaches the lava-licked ground. Venus is so hot — hot enough to melt lead — that the...

GIZMODO - After relying on an educated guess for decades, scientists have finally confirmed the dipole moment of aluminum monochloride (AlCl), an elusive but important molecule known to sneak around the interiors of ancient galaxies. An electric dipole moment is a measure of polarity—a crucial determinant for many physical properties of any system, such as...