Cool Worlds

Prof Jason Wright from Penn State explains why Tabby's Star has become known as the most mysterious star in the galaxy and how you can help him and Tabby Boyajian solve this mystery. To contribute to their Kickstarter campaign, go to https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/608159144/the-most-mysterious-star-in-the-galaxy right now!::More about this Video::► Kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/608159144/the-most-mysterious-star-in-the-galaxy► Boyajian et al. (2016), "Planet Hunters X. KIC 8462852 - Where's the Flux?": http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.03622► Wright et al. (2016), "The Ĝ Search for Extraterrestrial Civilizations with Large Energy Supplies. IV. The Signatures and Information Content...

Use code coolworlds at https://incogni.com/coolworlds to get an exclusive 60% off. Many of you wanted me to talk about the Dark Forest Hypothesis - an idea popularised (bit not limited to) the the sci-fi novel and Netflix series, "The Three Body Problem" by Liu Cixin. So in this video I'll explain what dark forest says and why I don't buy it. (Note - this is *not* an analysis of Cixin’s story beats set in his fictional universe, but rather the concept of dark forest in our real one! Although, I will refer to the al...

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There have been two scientific revolutions involving a "Kepler"- one 400 years ago and one on-going! Prof Kipping explains both and why NASA's Kepler Mission will go down in the history books as transformative.::More about this Video::► NASA's Kepler Mission website: http://kepler.nasa.gov► Burke et al. (2015), "Terrestrial Planet Occurrence Rates for the Kepler GK Dwarf Sample": http://arxiv.org/abs/1506.04175► Doyle et al. (2011), "Kepler-16: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet": http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.3432► Johansen et al. (2012), "Can planetary instability explain the Kepler dichotomy?": http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6898► Outro music by Taylor...

A huge thank-you to everyone who helped us reach this milestone!→ Support our research: https://www.coolworldslab.com/support→ Get merch: https://teespring.com/stores/cool-worlds-store→ Check out our podcast: www.youtube.com/@CoolWorldsPodcastTHANK-YOU to T. Widdowson, D. Smith, L. Sanborn, C. Bottaccini, D. Daughaday, S. Brownlee, E. West, T. Zajonc, A. De Vaal, M. Elliott, B. Daniluk, S. Vystoropskyi, S. Lee, Z. Danielson, C. Fitzgerald, C. Souter, M. Gillette, T. Jeffcoat, J. Rockett, D. Murphree, M. Sanford, T. Donkin, A. Schoen, K. Dabrowski, R. Ramezankhani, J. Armstrong, S. Marks, B. Smith, J. Kru...

Answers to your questions by Prof David Kipping from our "Proxima Planet Hunt" and "Polluted Dead Stars" videos (links below)! Thanks to all of you who posted questions, keep 'em coming, we love interacting with you all!::More about this Video::► "Proxima Planet Hunt" video: https://youtu.be/z5LVcfzRDI8► "Polluted Dead Stars" video: https://youtu.be/MAeqIQd6BMM► Dressing & Charbonneau (2015), "The Occurrence of Potentially Habitable Planets Orbiting M Dwarfs Estimated from the Full Kepler Dataset and an Empirical Measurement of the Detection Sensitivity": http://arxiv.org/abs/1501.01623► Veras (2015), "Post-main-sequence planetary system evolutio...

Use code coolworlds at https://incogni.com/coolworlds to get an exclusive 60% off. Rubin Observatory just came online and one of its main goals is to detect comets and asteroids that could threaten the Earth. But how long will this take? How many threats do we know of so far? And what could we do about it if we discovered one with our name on it? Join us today as we explore just how dangerous the skies can be...Written & presented by Prof. David Kipping, edited by Jorge Casas.→ Support our research: https://ww...

Cool Worlds Lab guest Dr Sarah Ballard from MIT explains how observing dead stars (white dwarfs) can reveal the makeup of exoplanets and even exoplanetesimals! Be sure to follow Sarah on Twitter @hubbahubble and check out her website at http://www.drsarahballard.com.::More about this Video::► Farihi et al. (2013), "Evidence for Water in the Rocky Debris of a Disrupted Extrasolar Minor Planet": http://arxiv.org/abs/1310.3269► Xu et al. (2014), "Elemental Compositions of Two Extrasolar Rocky Planetesimals": http://arxiv.org/abs/1401.4252► Vanderburg et al. (2015), "A disintegrating minor planet transiting a white dwarf": http://arxiv...

Light sails are a promising method for traveling through space - indeed, Breakthrough Starshot proposed a laser driven version could reach nearby stars. But the exorbitant costs and engineering challenges of such a proposal have stymied its realization. What if there was a way of using the Sun - no lasers required - but keeping our dream of interstellar travel in tact? Introducing TARS.This video is based on published research(see https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.17615 ) supported by the Cool Worlds donors (see below). Written & presented by Prof. David Kipping.→ Support our research: https://ww...

Click https://betterhelp.com/coolworlds for 10% off your first month of therapy with our sponsor BetterHelp. Join over 4 million people who’ve met with a therapist on BetterHelp and started living a healthier, happier life.We usually celebrate the big wins, the major discoveries, the eureka moments... but sometimes the most important moments in science aren't like this. Today we explore a pivotal moment that may have saved the field of exoplanets from a much darker path...Written & presented by Prof. David Kipping. Thanks to Matt Bailes for graciously coming on.→ Support our rese...

Proxima Centauri is our nearest star but we still don't know whether it has any planets. Prof Kipping discusses our planet hunting campaign using the space telescope MOST and gives you the latest news.::More about this Video::► Gillon et al. (2016), "Temperate Earth-sized planets transiting a nearby ultracool dwarf star": http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature17448.html► Muirhead at al. (2012), "Characterizing the Cool KOIs III. KOI-961: A Small Star with Large Proper Motion and Three Small Planets": http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.2189► MOST telescope homepage: http://most.astro.ubc.ca► O...

Use code coolworlds at https://incogni.com/coolworlds to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan.Déjà vu? Professor Avi Loeb has sparked controversy by suggesting - again - that a recently detected interstellar body passing through the Solar System (3I/ATLAS) could be an alien spacecraft. Today, we dive into what he his claiming and whether it holds up - just the science.Written & presented by Prof. David Kipping, edited by Jorge Casas. Special thanks to Jason Wright for fact checking.→ Support our research: https://www.coolworldslab.com/support→ Get me...

Use code coolworlds at https://incogni.com/coolworlds to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan.New research from the Cool Worlds Lab leads a shocking conclusion - most stars might be incapable of developing intelligent life....Written & presented by Prof. David Kipping, edited by Jorge Casas. Thumbnail by Pablo Carlos Budassi https://pablocarlosbudassi.com→ Support our research: https://www.coolworldslab.com/support→ Get merch: https://crowdmade.com/collections/cool-worlds→ Check out our podcast: www.youtube.com/@CoolWorldsPodcastPAPER: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01215THANK-YOU to D. Smith...

To celebrate the release of Star Wars Rogue One this weekend, let's ask the question - could we detect the Death Star with our current telescopes? Remarkably astronomers have been thinking about the detectability of alien megastructures, such as the Death Star, for many years and we can apply some scientific thinking to get to the answer.::More about this Video::► Companion video on Martin Archer's channel, "Is the Death Star a Star?": https://youtu.be/Q4CKSekJzxk► Kipping & Teachey 2016, "A Cloaking Device for Transiting Planets": https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.08928► Cool Worlds video by Ale...

In 1855, Captain William Stephen Jacob authored a paper in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society claiming that a planet likely existed in the binary star system 70 Ophiuchi. Although his claim ended being wrong, it's pretty remarkable that someone was even thinking about doing this with scientific methods at the time! Here we get into Jacob's claim, what went wrong, and what legacy this has left us with.::More about this Video::► Captain William S Jacob, "On Certain Anomalies Presented by the Binary Star 70 Ophiuchi": http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1855MNRAS..15..228J► Information comp...

We caught up with Prof Sean Carroll at a recent astronomy conference and got his thoughts about time. Time may seem like a fundamental property of the Universe, but actually there's nothing in quantum theory which requires this to be so. Prof Carroll explains how time being merely an illusion, an emergent property rather than a fundamental one, is actually compatible with our best understanding of nature. This is one of two videos we shot with Sean so look out for the second video later in the year!::More about this Video::► Sean Carroll: "From Et...

Would you like to help astronomers hunt for planets? Dr Marc Kuchner of NASA, principal investigator of the DiskDetective.org project, visited the Cool Worlds Lab and explains how you can become involved in a real planet hunting program online at DiskDetective.org.::More about this Video::► Disk Detective website: www.DiskDetective.org► Zooniverse website: https://www.zooniverse.org► Outro music by Taylor Davis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl9kI1yQKZk::Playlists For Channel::Latest Cool Worlds Videos ► http://bit.ly/NewCoolWorldsCool Worlds Research ► http://bit.ly/Coo...

Use code coolworlds at https://incogni.com/coolworlds to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan.Intelligent design purports that the Universe was made by a creator - God. One of the arguments often invoked to make this case is that the physical constants of the Universe are (apparently) finely tuned to permit life. But cosmologist Denis Sciama presented a thought-provoking analysis of this line of thought and suggested it might be possible to even test intelligent design. Join us today as we explore this fascinating concept.Written & presented by David Kipping, edited by...

Is there a way to naturally classify the different types of planets in the Universe? Two of the most fundamental properties of any object are its mass and size and generally one expects size to increase as we add more mass. The relationship between size and mass itself changes though at certain points, and this offers a clear way to classify worlds. Graduate student Jingjing Chen of the Cool Worlds Lab discusses one component of her new paper which does just this, classifying planets based off their mass and size and concluding that just four broad categories of planets...

Use code coolworlds at https://incogni.com/coolworlds to get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogni plan.The day has finally come! Today we share our results using JWST to look for exomoon around Kepler-167e... buckle in...Written & presented by David Kipping→ Support our research: https://www.coolworldslab.com/support→ Get merch: https://crowdmade.com/collections/cool-worlds→ Check out our podcast: www.youtube.com/@CoolWorldsPodcastTHANK-YOU to D. Smith, C. Bottaccini, D. Daughaday, S. Brownlee, E. West, T. Zajonc, A. De Vaal, M. Elliott, B. Daniluk, S. Vystoropskyi, S. Lee...