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We can now add atmospheric craziness to WASP-79b's already substantial exotic appeal. The gas-giant exoplanet, which lies about 780 light-years from Earth, circles extremely close to its bright host star, completing one orbit every 3.7 Earth days. That proximity makes WASP-79b scorching hot, with an average temperature around 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius), NASA officials said. All that heat puffs up WASP-79b substantially, making it one of the largest alien worlds ever observed. Although WASP-79b is just 85% as massive as Jupiter, it's 1.7 times wider than our solar system's biggest planet. Then there's the alien world's air, which...

Astrophysicists have developed a new method for calculating the effect of Rayleigh scattering on photons, potentially allowing researchers to better understand the formation of the Universe. The CMB is the oldest light in the universe, which originated when electrons combined with protons to form the first atoms. These primordial atoms were also the first to Rayleigh scatter light. UBC theoretical cosmology graduate student Elham Alipour, UBC physicist Kris Sigurdson and Ohio State University astrophysicist Christopher Hirata probed the effect of Rayleigh scattering -- the process that makes the sky appear blue when the Sun's photons are scattered by molecules...