You may recall a news item from a few years ago about a planet where it rains rubies and sapphires. The distant exoplanet in question carries the catchy moniker HAT-P-7b, and it’s a so-called “hot Jupiter” approximately 16 times the size of Earth. Although it’s appealing to imagine harvesting precious gems from the clouds, the…

On July 14th, 1965, the Mariner 4 probe transmitted a photo of Mars back to Earth. The grainy image of 500,000 square miles of the Martian surface was humanity’s first photo of another planet. Although it was taken from an altitude of over 9800 km, it yielded enough detail to significantly overhaul our understanding of…

The rise of both human population and global temperatures has led many to believe that the future of humanity lies in making us a multi-planet species. As we have previously reported, however, the nearest habitable planets are simply too far for us to colonize in the near future. Some believe we should be focusing on…