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Phil Plait

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(He/Him)
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As seen in: Bad Astronomy Newsletter, Scientific American, Medium, MSN, Yahoo Entertainment, Yahoo Life, Business Insider, HuffPost, The Washington Post, Aol, News.com.au, TED and
Covers:  Astronomy, space, politics, science
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Articles

Can we stop calling exoplanets ‘Earth-like,' please?

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By Phil Plait Verified, Lee Billings Verified
| Scientific American Verified
Claiming an exoplanet to be “Earth-like” is a trend that needs to bite the dust From what I can gather, Freddie Mercury—the rightfully celebrated lead singer of Queen—was about the same height as I am. So while I'm certainly not Freddie Mercury's twin, would you say I'm Freddie Mercury–like? Besides having our heights in common, I also am male, have facial hair and can carry a tune (though at that, I am not a champion ).
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‘Earth-like’ exoplanets may exist—but we don’t know of any yet

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By Phil Plait Verified
| Yahoo Verified
From what I can gather, Freddie Mercury—the rightfully celebrated lead singer of Queen—was about the same height as I am. So while I'm certainly not Freddie Mercury's twin, would you say I'm Freddie Mercury–like? Besides having our heights in common, I also am male, have facial hair and can carry a tune (though at that, I am not a champion). Weirdly, we both also worked with rock stars named Brian with Ph.D.s. related to physics, too.
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What happens when Betelgeuse blows its top?

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By Phil Plait Verified, Lee Billings Verified
| Scientific American Verified
Betelgeuse, the sky's most famous red supergiant, is well studied but poorly understood Betelgeuse has always been something of a mystery. And by “mystery,” I mean a source of endless fun, fascination and frustration for astronomers. Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the sky, marking the right shoulder of the constellation Orion. It's a red supergiant, a massive star with more than a dozen times the sun's heft, that's blasting out many tens of thousands as much light as our own star.
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