Alien Planets

It's hard for an exoplanet to keep itself together in the neighborhood of two parent stars.

These are the top space stories this week from Space.com.

A wild variety of star systems exist in the nearby regions of the Milky Way, and astronomers are eager to know where they might find an "Earth 2.0."

The circumplanetary disk has the potential to form numerous elusive exomoons.

Despite numerous attempts, astronomers have not yet confirmed the detection of an exomoon, a moon orbiting a planet around a distant star.

Astronomers have spotted more strange "free-floating" planets that could roam deep space untethered to any star.

The universe is populated with stars that live in pairs, and these systems could mean double trouble for scientists wanting to find Earth-like planets.

Conditions for the emergence of more complex forms of life as we know it on Earth on exoplanets orbiting stars in the Milky Way seem to be rare, a new study has found.

A Neptune-like planet that's relatively close to Earth may boast clouds containing water vapor.

E.T. could also potentially have detected life on Earth, scientists say.

A pair of gas-giant exoplanets was found orbiting a distant sun-like star, thanks to the help of citizen scientists around the world.

Learn what makes exoplanets habitable and find new homes for distressed aliens in a new game from PBS.

The Hubble Space Telescope peered out into the cosmos, 379 light-years from Earth, and spotted a giant planet forming, the youngest planet ever spotted by the space telescope.

Scientists have detected the largest stellar flare ever recorded from Proxima Centauri. The finding changes what we know about stellar flares and the potential for alien life around red dwarfs.

The newly discovered exoplanet is three times as massive as Earth.

The droplets falling through alien skies are broadly similar to the ones that splash down here on Earth, even if they're made of different stuff.

A NASA spacecraft built to spot alien worlds has completed its first two years of work, and the tally is in: the mission hauled in 2,241 new planet candidates for scientists to study.

Astronomers spotted a possible searing-hot planet orbiting Vega, one of the brightest and most famous stars in the sky.