New Delhi: The James Webb Space Telescope peering into circumstellar disks around shrouded embryonic stars and capturing the light from distant planetary
atmospheres is revealing that the complex chemical processes required for life starts in interactions between gases, ices and dust in the temperature gradients around newborn stars even before exoplanets are formed. The research based on samples returned from distant asteroids in the Solar System supports these findings. Scientists are increasingly starting to look at life as an astrophyiscal process as against a geological one, with a warm little point getting struck by lightning in the shadow of an active volcano being an outdated paradigm for life now.
In 2025, scientists have discovered many weird and wonderful exoplanets, including circumbinary planets in polar orbits, rocky worlds in systems with Hot Jupiters, potential exomoons, and worlds that survived the destruction of their host stars. The science of exoplanets is not always about discovering or characterising exoplanets, we are also improving our theoretical understandings of the range of conditions in which exoplanets are formed in the first place, the environments in which they evolve, and dynamic interactions over time. We have a listicle with the major exoplanet discoveries of 2025, this one focuses on the larger picture.
Super Earths
Super Earths are worlds larger than the Earth, with more surface area, and a higher gravity. These are likely to have flatter topographies because of the increased gravity, with many likely to be archipelago planets, where island chains are common. The conditions would be extremely challenging for life on such worlds, with thick, dense atmospheres and crushing conditions. Time itself may move slower for the inhabitants who would need rockets many times the size of the Pyramids to launch a mission comparable to Apollo. New studies indicate that rocky worlds need not form only in the inner reaches of the solar system, and that Super Earths may be common in orbits around distant stars.
Cosmic Billiards
The planets are assembled in the disk of ice, gas and dust surrounding a newborn star. While pebbles and boulders may clump up into mountains, worlds can also be battered to bits and stripped to their cores. Violent, catastrophic interactions are common in the early stages of a planetary system, with a Mars-sized body called Theia slamming into the Earth to form the Moon. Scientists may have observed such a catastrophic collision between planetesimals in the debris disk surrounding a newborn star, Fomalhaut.
Star eats Planet
There are many ways in which a star can eat up a planet. In about five billion years the Sun will run out of nuclear fuel, expand and swallow up the inner rocky worlds, at least Mercury, Venus and Earth. Hot Jupiter exoplanets migrating inwards towards their host star can launch inner worlds out of the system. These Hot Jupiters enter into tight orbits around their host stars, become tidally locked, inflate their atmospheres, and get stripped. Such worlds may even fall into their host stars, and astronomers believe that they have captured a belch from the host star after snacking on a wayward world.
Exocomet Belts
Stars are particularly violent and energetic in their childhoods, just like human children. Water cannot survive in close proximity, and has to be transported in later from comets and asteroids. It is believed that all the water on the Earth was delivered by icy bodies from the outer solar system, and the process may be similar to other worlds across the galaxy. Scientists have conducted a survey of 74 exocometary belts, with some systems hosting multiple rings. The research reveals a wide range of conditions in which planets formed, with the temperatures of the belts ranging from -250 to -150°C.
Red Suns
While astronomers have discovered over 6,600 exoplanets, not a single rocky world is known to orbit a habitable orange dwarf star like our Sun. Most of the rocky, terrestrial exoplanets we have discovered are in orbits around Red Dwarf stars. These Red Dwarf stars are smaller and cooler than the Sun, but erupt in energetic and violent flashes. The worlds need to be in tighter orbits to maintain water, and are more exposed to the temper tantrums of the host star. Research bolsters the idea that rocky worlds in orbits around Red Dwarfs may be very hostile environments for life.
Debris Disks
The James Webb Space Telescope has peered into circumstellar disks, and has discovered water ice in the debris disk around a newborn star. The system, designated as HD 181327 is about 155 lightyears from the Earth. Spitzer had previously detected water ice in the system about a decade ago. Now while Webb typically observes the debris disks surrounding newborn stars, in 2025, Webb resolved a circumplanetary disk for the first time. These are debris disks surrounding newborn planets, and it is believed that the largest moons of Saturn and Jupiter formed by a similar process in our own Solar System.
