At the first Christmas, three astrologers followed a star that shone so brightly, it looked like a diamond in the sky. A new study suggests that some stars in the Milky Way could harbor "carbon super-Earths"–giant terrestrial planets that are made up of 50% diamonds.
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When our satellites search for other planets that might harbor life, they always search for water. But now, for the first time, astronomers have detected around a burgeoning solar system a sprawling cloud of water vapor that’s cold enough to form comets, which could eventually deliver oceans to dry planets. And with oceans, life could spring up–or maybe migrate to the planet from another place.
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Some people think our sun has a twin (NOTE: subscribers can still listen to this show). We don’t known whether or not this is true, but NASA HAS discovered a planet about the size of Saturn that is orbiting around two suns. Previously this was thought to be impossible–something that could only happen in science fiction or on "Star Trek."
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Are we isolated in our lonely little corner of the Milky Way? Quasars are highly luminous objects that emit light over a wide range of wavelengths, revealing elements such as hydrogen, nitrogen, silicon, carbon and iron in the gas around them, and measurements on the light from distant quasars reveal that our part of the universe is fine-tuned to be exceptionally conducive to the formation of carbon-based life.
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