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UrduRemnants of planets with Earth-like crusts have been discovered in the atmospheres of four nearby white dwarf stars by University of Warwick astronomers, offering a glimpse of the planets that may have once orbited them up to billions of years ago.
Tag: PLANETS/MOONS
A new way of forming planets
In the last 25 years, scientists have discovered over 4000 planets beyond the borders of our solar system. From relatively small rock and water worlds to blisteringly hot gas giants, the planets display a remarkable variety. This variety is not…
‘Farfarout’! Solar system’s most distant planetoid confirmed
A team, including an astronomer from the University of Hawai?i Institute for Astronomy (IfA), have confirmed a planetoid that is almost four times farther from the Sun than Pluto, making it the most distant object ever observed in our solar…
A new way to look for life-sustaining planets
New capabilities developed by an international team of astronomers make it possible to directly image planets that could potentially harbor life within the habitable zone of a neighboring star system
Astronomers uncover mysterious origins of ‘super-Earths’
Study shows super-Earths are not leftovers of mini-Neptunes, challenging our understanding of planetary formation
Astronomers confirm orbit of most distant object ever observed in our solar system
Scientists have collected enough observations to determine the planetoid’s orbit based on its slow motion across the sky
Can super-Earth interior dynamics set the table for habitability?
Are super-Earths capable of creating conditions that are hospitable for life to arise and thrive?
Super-Earth atmospheres probed at Sandia’s Z machine
A step in the search for life elsewhere in the galaxy
Martian landslides caused by underground salts and melting ice?
February 3, 2021, Mountain View, CA – A team of researchers led by SETI Institute Senior Research Scientist Janice Bishop, a member of the SETI Institute NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) team, has come up with a theory about what is…
An innovative and non-destructive strategy to analyse material from Mars
The IBeA research group of the University of the Basque Country has proposed a method that can be used to characterise samples from the Mars Sample Return mission
Astronomers detect extended dark matter halo around ancient dwarf galaxy
Findings suggest the first galaxies in the universe were more massive than previously thought
High schoolers discover four exoplanets through Harvard and Smithsonian mentorship program
The high schoolers turned scientists published their findings this week, thanks to a research mentorship program at the Center for Astrophysics; Harvard and Smithsonian
Thick lithosphere casts doubt on plate tectonics in Venus’s geologically recent past
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — At some point between 300 million and 1 billion years ago, a large cosmic object smashed into the planet Venus, leaving a crater more than 170 miles in diameter. A team of Brown University researchers…
Women’s menstrual cycles temporarily synchronize with Moon cycles
Women temporarily synchronize their menstrual cycles with the luminance and gravimetric cycles of the Moon
The naming of Tooley crater
Like Einstein, Galileo, and Copernicus, former NASA program manager Craig Tooley now has a place on the Moon named in his honor. Tooley crater is a 7 km crater in a permanently shadowed region of Shoemaker crater near the lunar…
NASA’s Roman mission will probe galaxy’s core for hot Jupiters, brown dwarfs
When it launches in the mid-2020s, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will explore an expansive range of infrared astrophysics topics. One eagerly anticipated survey will use a gravitational effect called microlensing to reveal thousands of worlds that are similar…
Astronomers discover first cloudless, Jupiter-like planet
This marks the second time astronomers have ever observed a cloud-free exoplanet
Mystery of Martian glaciers revealed
Research shows Mars had as many as six to 20 ice ages during the past 300-800 million years
Mapping our sun’s backyard
Astronomers and citizen scientists produce the most complete 3D map of cool brown dwarfs in the Sun’s neighborhood
Shining a new light on dark energy
Dark Energy Survey releases catalog of 700 million objects
Scientists and philosopher team up, propose a new way to categorize minerals
A diamond lasts forever, but that doesn’t mean all diamonds have a common history
The upside of volatile space weather
Robust stellar flares might not prevent life on exoplanets, could facilitate its detection
SwRI-led team finds meteoric evidence for a previously unknown asteroid
Mineralogy points to large, water-rich parent asteroid for carbonaceous chondrite meteorite
Dark storm on Neptune reverses direction, possibly shedding a fragment
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope watched a mysterious dark vortex on Neptune abruptly steer away from a likely death on the giant blue planet. The storm, which is wider than the Atlantic Ocean, was born in the planet’s northern…
Scientists use NASA data to predict appearance of December 14, 2020 eclipse
On Dec. 14, 2020, the Moon’s shadow raced across Chile and Argentina, casting a thin ribbon of land into brief, mid-day darkness. Those in the path of this total solar eclipse glimpsed the solar system in motion. During a solar…
SwRI models point to a potentially diverse metabolic menu at Enceladus
Discovery provides more evidence that the Saturn moon could support life in its subsurface ocean
A pair of lonely planet-like objects born like stars
Star-forming processes sometimes create mysterious astronomical objects called brown dwarfs, which are smaller and colder than stars, and can have masses and temperatures down to those of exoplanets in the most extreme cases. Just like stars, brown dwarfs often wander…
Hubble identifies strange exoplanet that behaves like the long-sought “Planet Nine”
The 11-Jupiter-mass exoplanet called HD106906 b occupies an unlikely orbit around a double star 336 light-years away and it may be offering clues to something that might be much closer to home: a hypothesized distant member of our Solar System…
Hubble pins down weird exoplanet with far-flung orbit
A planet in an unlikely orbit around a double star 336 light-years away may offer a clue to a mystery much closer to home: a hypothesized, distant body in our solar system dubbed “Planet Nine.” This is the first time…
Water on Mars not as widespread as previously thought, study finds
Researchers considered more variables and took global weather patterns into account to create maps of where water might be found.
Exoplanet around distant star resembles reputed ‘Planet Nine’ in our solar system
Astronomers confirm bound orbit for planet far from its star, showing that far-flung planets exist
Researchers discover a new superhighway system in the Solar System
Researchers have discovered a new superhighway network to travel through the Solar System much faster than was previously possible. Such routes can drive comets and asteroids near Jupiter to Neptune’s distance in under a decade and to 100 astronomical units…
Using Earth’s history to inform the search for life on exoplanets
UC Riverside-led team looks back to find life beyond
Image-based navigation could help spacecraft safely land on the moon
Research demonstrates how a series of lunar images could provide key navigational data
Rochester researchers uncover key clues about the solar system’s history
New clues lead to a better understanding of the evolution of the solar system and the origin of Earth as a habitable planet
Planetary scientist named key partner on NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer mission
Christopher Edwards joins multi-institutional team led by Caltech to design and build instrumentation for satellite to study the Moon’s water cycle and make critical basemaps
What will the climate be like when earth’s next supercontinent forms?
In roughly 200 million years, the continents will once again unite into a supercontinent; a new study explores how the next Pangea could affect the global climate
Linda Schweizer tells the story of Palomar observatory in ‘Cosmic Odyssey’
New MIT Press looks at how intrepid astronomers at Palomar observatory changed our view of the universe
Growing interest in Moon resources could cause tension, scientists find
New research indicates that limited resources on Earth’s satellite could cause crowding and competition as site selection, extraction become reality
Milky Way family tree
Astrophysicists reconstruct the galaxy merger history of our home galaxy
Field geology at Mars’ equator points to ancient megaflood
ITHACA, N.Y. – Floods of unimaginable magnitude once washed through Gale Crater on Mars’ equator around 4 billion years ago – a finding that hints at the possibility that life may have existed there, according to data collected by NASA’s…
AGU Fall Meeting: Press event schedule and online media center now live
WASHINGTON–The press conference schedule and online media center are now live for Fall Meeting 2020, when more than 20,000 attendees from 110 countries are expected to assemble virtually for the largest worldwide conference in the Earth and space sciences. This…
Chemical physicist to collaborate on NASA-funded study of Saturn’s moon Titan
Findings will contribute to NASA’s mission to Titan in 2026
Astronomers’ success: seven new cosmic masers
The publication is the result of many months of observations of radiation coming from the plane of the Milky Way, namely from the spiral arms of our galaxy, where a lot of matter, dust and gas accumulate. It is under…
In the mysterious Blue Ring Nebula, scientists see the fate of binary stars
In 2004, scientists with NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer spotted an object unlike any they’d seen in our Milky Way Galaxy: a large, faint blob of gas that seemed to have a star at its center. In the ultraviolet wavelengths used…
Ancient zircon minerals from Mars reveal the elusive internal structure of the red planet
The uranium-bearing mineral zircon is an abundant constituent of Earth’s continental crust, providing information about the age and origin of the continents and large geological features such as mountain chains and giant volcanoes. But unlike Earth, Mars’s crust is not…
Building blocks of life can form long before stars
An international team of scientists have shown that glycine, the simplest amino acid and an important building block of life, can form under the harsh conditions that govern chemistry in space. The results, published in Nature Astronomy , suggest that…
SwRI scientists expand space instrument’s capabilities
Researchers add second dating technique to prototype spaceflight instrument
Heat and dust help launch Martian water into space, scientists find
Scientists using an instrument aboard NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, or MAVEN, spacecraft have discovered that water vapor near the surface of the Red Planet is lofted higher into the atmosphere than anyone expected was possible. There, it is…
Escape from Mars: how water fled the red planet
New UArizona-led research updates our understanding of how water escapes Mars – not like a leaky faucet but with a sudden splash.