One of the most mystifying planets to many of us are the hot Jupiters. These massive worlds have orbits smaller than Mercury’s and in some cases are so close to their stars that starlight is pushing mass off the planet or the planet is raising tides on the star. Exactly how you snuggle a planet next to a star and have it stay there is … confusing. And now we know, not all the planets succeed in getting close without falling in. Back in 2019, a star about 12,000 light years from Earth, in a particularly crowded part of the sky, was observed by the NEOWISE mission to start shining with a lot...

The Universe sometimes likes to mock us. Such is the case with exoplanets. Once upon a time, researchers would sagely say, “Solar Systems like Tatooine, with twin stars, likely don’t exist.” The thing is, this was based on models that relied on limits created with...