Your interstellar police squad has tracked a group of criminals to a cluster of seven planets. Now you must apprehend them before their reinforcements arrive. Of course, the fugitives won't just stay put _ they'll try to dodge you by...

New simulations of a triple-star system in the constellation Orion suggest that a planet might be orbiting three stars, which could drastically increase the amount of the solar systems we believe are out there forming planets! And the...

Four rocky inner planets and four gaseous outer planets - makes sense, right? But when astronomers turned their eyes to planets beyond our star system they found out that many systems are set up differently. Why?

Do other planets have weather? It turns out that, yes, they do! But, the weather isn't all the same on other planets because of things like atmosphere. In this episode of Crash Course Kids, Sabrina takes us on a tour of the weather on...

After Pluto's demotion to dwarf planet in 2006, our solar system went from having nine planets to eight. But about a decade later, some astronomers proposed there was another planet, larger than Earth, hiding in the Kuiper Belt. And in...

Tidally locked planets could be more common than Earth-like planets! And these 'eyeball planets' might even be a promising place to look for unique lifeforms!

We're used to talking about planets as spherical objects, but a donut-shaped planet is theoretically possible. What would life be like on one of these?

Extreme environments full of life on Earth have led researchers to expand the definition of habitability to something that includes many more planets, potentially leading us to evidence of living things in a dramatically shorter time!...

Some funky orbits near the Kuiper Belt are hinting towards a brand new planet, the elusive ‘Planet X.’ Our friends Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin of Caltech are working hard to finally spot the potential gas giant through powerful...

Astronomer Jean-Luc Margot has come up with a new definition for planets that may help us categorize worlds outside of the solar system, and we may have also discovered a new dwarf planet within the solar system!

How do we find planets -- even habitable planets -- around other stars? By looking for tiny dimming as a planet passes in front of its sun, TED Fellow Lucianne Walkowicz and the Kepler mission have found some 1,200 potential new...

Hunting for rogue planets is like hunting for an invisible needle in a haystack. But we're getting a much clearer view thanks to gravitational microlensing surveys. And it looks like there are a LOT more of them out there than we thought.

Jessi introduces you to some of the most newly-named members of the solar system: the five dwarf planets!

Today Hank brings us the news of a unique astronomical discovery - a rogue planet. He also allays our fears of an apocalyptic collision with Earth. So, this new planet is awesome, but it needs a different name - CFBDSIR...

Earth is unique in that it's the only planet we know of that can support life. But could there be another planet like ours somewhere far away?

We've only found one planet in a globular cluster, where gravitational interactions should usually rip baby planets apart, but that's not all that excites astronomers about PSR 1620-26 b.

Shortly after Jupiter formed, it might have been struck by an object that may have otherwise become its own planet! And researchers have a new estimate of how many Earth-like planets might exist.

This week in space. Scientists have discovered a black hole that could possibly everything we know about black holes, and also, evidence that planets, yes planets, could form around super massive black holes.

Every star we see in the sky has at least one planet orbiting it, says astronomer Sara Seager. So what do we know about these exoplanets, and how can we find out more? Seager introduces her favorite set of exoplanets and shows new...

There's a rare material called Darwin Glass that Tasmanian Aboriginals have prized for centuries. And while it took Western researchers a while to figure out what it was and where it came from, once they got their heads around it, they...

Stellar astronomer and TED Senior Fellow Lucianne Walkowicz works on NASA's Kepler mission, searching for places in the universe that could support life. So it's worth a listen when she asks us to think carefully about Mars. In this...

Astronomers have used a few different methods to detect exoplanets, and improved telescopes are increasing the rate of discovery. But is it possible that any stars DON'T have planets, or are they just an expected feature of stellar...

Astronomers have found more evidence for Planet 9, but another study has added another problem to our list of space travel problems.

Astronomers believe that every star in the galaxy has a planet, one fifth of which might harbor life. Only we haven't seen any of them -- yet. Jeremy Kasdin and his team are looking to change that with the design and engineering of an...