Astronomers have released a major exoplanet update in 2026, singling out 45 rocky worlds across the galaxy as the 'best bets' for life from a pool of more than 6,000 known candidates, in work led from Cornell University and published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The paper, titled Probing the Limits of Habitability: a Catalogue of Rocky Exoplanets in the Habitable Zone, was published on 19 March. Its authors are Abigail Bohl, an undergraduate at Cornell, alumni Lucas Lawrence and Gillis Lowry, and Professor Lisa Kaltenegger, who directs the Carl Sagan Institute in Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences.
