Fly yourself to the Moon (Google Moon)

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Source: Google, NASA

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Planet-Eating Stars Hint at Earth’s Ultimate Fate

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By Matthew R. Francis , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Our Sun is about halfway through its life, which means Earth is as well. After a star exhausts its hydrogen nuclear fuel, its diameter expands more than a hundredfold, engulfing any unlucky planets in close orbits. That day is at least 5 billion years off for our solar system, but scientists have spotted a possible preview of our world’s fate. Using data from the  TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) observatory , astronomers  Edward Bryant  of the University of Warwick and  Vincent Van Eylen  of University College London compared systems with stars in the main sequence of their lifetimes—fusing hydrogen, like the Sun—with post–main sequence stars closer to the end of their lifetimes, both with and without planets. “We saw that these planets are getting rarer [as stars age],” Bryant said. In other words,  planets are disappearing as their host stars grow old . The comparison between planetary systems w...
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This ‘Galaxy That Wasn’t’ Never Bore Any Stars

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By Katrina Miller , The New York Times.  Excerpt: This week, astronomers announced the discovery of a new kind of cosmic object, something that is very nearly a galaxy, save for one crucial, missing ingredient: stars. The almost-galaxy is about 14 million light-years from Earth. It was the ninth cloud found to be associated with a nearby spiral galaxy, leading to its serendipitous name: Cloud-9. The object is starless, consisting of only a haze of hydrogen gas that astronomers believe is swaddled in a much more massive clump of  dark matter,  the invisible substance that permeates the cosmos and shapes its overarching structure. ...Cloud-9 is the first confirmed example of what astronomers call a RELHIC, short for Reionization-Limited H I Cloud and pronounced “relic.” Such objects are rich in gaseous hydrogen but devoid of any stars. They are  failed galaxies  thought to be nearly as old as time itself, primordial fossils that can help astronomers understand the...
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Earth-size planet spotted with yearlong orbit

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By Elise Cutts , Science.  Excerpt: Astronomers are planning ambitious telescopes to search for signs of life on distant planets. A newly discovered world, announced here last week at the Rocky Worlds conference and  published yesterday  in  The Astrophysical Journal Letters , might just be the perfect target. The planet, called HD 137010 b, is almost exactly Earth-size. At 355 days, its orbit is almost exactly Earth-like, too. And its star is bright and just 146 light-years away–close enough to be observed in detail with future telescopes....  Full article at https://www.science.org/content/article/earth-size-planet-spotted-yearlong-orbit . 
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