Space, science, and the human mind. Since 1995.
Deep Field
A Space Daily column

Deep Field

Astronomy and cosmology

Deep Field covers astronomy and cosmology. Telescopes and what they find, planets near and far, and the strange physics of the deep universe, traced back to the journal papers and observatory data behind the headlines.

Constellations

We tend to assume life needs a star to begin, but a 2025 study found that some moons carried into deep space by planets expelled during supernova explosions could preserve subsurface oceans for billions of years — heated not by sunlight, but by the repeated gravitational flexing of their orbits.

The usual picture of life begins with a star. A planet forms around it, settles into an orbit where temperatures are not too hot or too cold, and receives the steady energy that makes chemistry possible.

Constellations

An exoplanet 124 light-years away may harbour a global ocean beneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. Webb has produced two tentative hints of dimethyl sulfide—a gas produced mainly by marine microorganisms on Earth—but independent analyses dispute whether the molecule has been detected at all, leaving scientists divided over what the data mean.

Webb has twice hinted at dimethyl sulfide, a life-linked gas, at the possible ocean world K2-18b. Independent teams re-examining the data doubt the molecule is there at all.

Exo Worlds

We assumed water had to be delivered to planets by comets or asteroids — but a 2025 Nature study found that sub-Neptunes, the most common type of planet in the galaxy, can forge their own oceans by reacting hydrogen atmospheres with molten rock deep inside their cores

Water was thought to arrive on planets aboard comets and asteroids. A 2025 Nature study shows sub-Neptunes, the galaxy's most common planets, can make their own by reacting hydrogen atmospheres with molten rock.