http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. A team of international scientists including a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory astrophysicist has made the most detailed examination yet of the atmosphere of a Jupiter-size like planet beyond our solar system. http://phys.org/news285322242.html Space & Earth Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:11:18 EST news285322242 (Phys.org)—Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope have obtained what is likely the first direct observation of a forming planet still embedded in a thick disc of gas and dust. If confirmed, this discovery will greatly improve our understanding of how planets form and allow astronomers to test the current theories against an observable target. http://phys.org/news281271964.html Space & Earth Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:06:14 EST news281271964 (Phys.org)—Research by Loughborough University physicists casts new light on Saturn's moonlets – and could help solve some of the mysteries surrounding planet formation. http://phys.org/news280065567.html Space & Earth Thu, 14 Feb 2013 12:50:01 EST news280065567 (Phys.org)—An international team of astronomers led by Satoshi Mayama (The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Japan) and Ruobing Dong (Princeton University) has made observations with the Subaru Telescope and captured the first vivid infrared image of a curved arm of dust extending over a hole on a disk around a young star—2MASS J16042165-2130284 (J 1604). This feature indicates the probable existence of unseen planets within the hole. The image shows the dynamic environment in which planets may be born and gives information about constraints on the distance at which planets can form from a central star. http://phys.org/news279532082.html Space & Earth Fri, 08 Feb 2013 08:10:02 EST news279532082 (Phys.org)—A star thought to have passed the age at which it can form planets may, in fact, be creating new worlds. The disk of material surrounding the surprising star called TW Hydrae may be massive enough to make even more planets than we have in our own solar system. http://phys.org/news278778523.html Space & Earth Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:29:26 EST news278778523 (Phys.org)—Comets trailing wispy tails across the night sky are a beautiful byproduct of our solar system's formation, icy leftovers from 4.6 billion years ago when the planets coalesced from rocky rubble. http://phys.org/news276797567.html Space & Earth Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:12:58 EST news276797567 Astronomers have found the youngest still-forming solar system yet seen, an infant star surrounded by a swirling disk of dust and gas more than 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus. http://phys.org/news273926410.html Space & Earth Wed, 05 Dec 2012 13:00:23 EST news273926410 (Phys.org)—An international team of researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and the Japanese universities of Kobe, Hyogo, and Saitama used the Subaru Telescope to capture a clear image of the protoplanetary disk of the star UX Tauri A. The team's subsequent, detailed study of the disk's characteristics suggests that its dust particles are large in size and non-spherical in shape. This exciting result shows that these dust grains are colliding with and adhering to each other, a process that will lead to their eventual formation into planets. http://phys.org/news273315818.html Space & Earth Wed, 28 Nov 2012 09:03:47 EST news273315818 Astronomers using infrared data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii have discovered a "super-Jupiter" around the bright star Kappa Andromedae, which now holds the record for the most massive star known to host a directly imaged planet or lightweight brown dwarf companion. http://phys.org/news272537770.html Space & Earth Mon, 19 Nov 2012 08:56:22 EST news272537770 (Phys.org)—A joint effort of citizen scientists and professional astronomers has led to the first reported case of a planet orbiting twin suns that in turn is orbited by a second distant pair of stars. http://phys.org/news269544718.html Space & Earth Mon, 15 Oct 2012 18:32:12 EST news269544718 According to the nebular hypothesis, star formation produces a gaseous protoplanetary disk around it, providing the environment and material for planet formation. Studying these systems can generate information regarding how and when planets formed, and is a hot topic in astrophysics. http://phys.org/news268557396.html Space & Earth Thu, 04 Oct 2012 08:16:45 EST news268557396 The Earth and the planets of our solar system are not alone in the universe. Over the past few decades, the hunt for extrasolar planets has yielded incredible discoveries, and now planetary researchers have a new tool—simulated models of how planets are born. http://phys.org/news265985676.html Space & Earth Tue, 04 Sep 2012 13:54:49 EST news265985676 (Phys.org)—A team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has spotted sugar molecules in the gas surrounding a young Sun-like star. This is the first time sugar been found in space around such a star, and the discovery shows that the building blocks of life are in the right place, at the right time, to be included in planets forming around the star. http://phys.org/news265442395.html Space & Earth Wed, 29 Aug 2012 07:00:02 EST news265442395 An international team, led by EXOEarths researchers (Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto), proposes that metals like magnesium might have an important role in the formation of low mass planets. http://phys.org/news264349404.html Space & Earth Thu, 16 Aug 2012 15:23:30 EST news264349404 A study published in the July 5 edition of the journal Nature is challenging scientists' understanding of planet formation, suggesting that planets might form much faster than previously thought or, alternatively, that stars harboring planets could be far more numerous. http://phys.org/news260625944.html Space & Earth Wed, 04 Jul 2012 13:05:56 EST news260625944 Baby galaxies from the young Universe more than 12 billion years ago evolved faster than previously thought, shows new research from the Niels Bohr Institute. This means that already in the early history of the Universe, there was potential for planet formation and life. The research results have been published in the scientific journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters. http://phys.org/news256389912.html Space & Earth Wed, 16 May 2012 12:26:11 EST news256389912 A research team of Japanese astronomers led by Dr. Hideaki Fujiwara (Subaru Telescope) has discovered a main-sequence star that is surrounded by a rare disk of quartz dust. Collisions of planetesimals, building blocks for planets, may have produced the dusty quartz ring during planet formation around the star. Based on observations with the AKARI and Spitzer infrared space telescopes, this recently discovered, intriguing feature of a stellar system may open new doors for research on the mineralogical nature of extrasolar planetary systems. http://phys.org/news255411011.html Space & Earth Sat, 05 May 2012 06:50:01 EST news255411011 New research predicts the criteria needed for Earth-like planets to form around a star that have one-tenth the metallicity of our Sun. If researchers find small, rocky planets orbiting stars with lower metallicity, it may challenge the presently accepted "core accretion" model of planetary formation. http://phys.org/news253268314.html Space & Earth Tue, 10 Apr 2012 09:18:52 EST news253268314 A group of European astronomers has discovered an ancient planetary system that is likely to be a survivor from one of the earliest cosmic eras, 13 billion years ago. The system consists of the star HIP 11952 and two planets, which have orbital periods of 290 and 7 days, respectively. Whereas planets usually form within clouds that include heavier chemical elements, the star HIP 11952 contains very little other than hydrogen and helium. The system promises to shed light on planet formation in the early universe – under conditions quite different from those of later planetary systems, such as our own. http://phys.org/news252088987.html Space & Earth Tue, 27 Mar 2012 17:43:13 EST news252088987 (PhysOrg.com) -- Our galaxy may be awash in homeless planets, wandering through space instead of orbiting a star. http://phys.org/news249228334.html Space & Earth Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:05:47 EST news249228334 (PhysOrg.com) -- Using high-powered lasers, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and collaborators discovered that molten magnesium silicate undergoes a phase change in the liquid state, abruptly transforming to a more dense liquid with increasing pressure. The research provides insight into planet formation. http://phys.org/news248104977.html Physics Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:05:09 EST news248104977 (PhysOrg.com) -- The SEEDS (Strategic Exploration of Exoplanets and Disks with Subaru Telescope/HiCIAO) project, a five-year international collaboration launched in 2009 and led by Motohide Tamura of NAOJ (National Astronomical Observatory of Japan) has yielded another impressive image that contributes to our understanding of the link between disks and planet formation. http://phys.org/news244449890.html Space & Earth Fri, 30 Dec 2011 06:45:08 EST news244449890 Last January two amateur meteorite hunters dropped by Randy Korotev's office at Washington University in St. Louis to show him their latest purchase, a 17-kilogram pallasite meteorite found in 2006 near Conception Junction (population 202) in northwest Missouri. http://phys.org/news240142297.html Space & Earth Thu, 10 Nov 2011 10:11:56 EST news240142297 A new image of the disk of gas and dust around a sun-like star has spiral-arm-like structures. These features may provide clues to the presence of embedded but as-yet-unseen planets. http://phys.org/news238259809.html Space & Earth Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:17:00 EST news238259809 Searching for extra-solar planets -- which are planets outside of our solar system -- is very popular these days. About 700 planets are known at the moment, a number that is continuously rising due to refined observational techniques. Professor Alexander Krivov and his team of astronomers of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) just made a remarkable discovery: the scientists from the Astrophysical Institute were able to establish proof of so-called debris discs around two stars. http://phys.org/news236510798.html Space & Earth Thu, 29 Sep 2011 10:50:03 EST news236510798 For the first time, scientists have found convincing evidence for the presence of liquid water in a comet, shattering the current paradigm that comets never get warm enough to melt the ice that makes up the bulk of their material. http://phys.org/news221245067.html Space & Earth Tue, 05 Apr 2011 17:58:18 EST news221245067 Some estimates indicate that 25% of Sun-like stars have Earth-like planets. A new study now shows that these planets are almost certain to have oceans if they are located in the right temperature zone around their host stars. http://phys.org/news218459724.html Space & Earth Fri, 04 Mar 2011 12:00:01 EST news218459724 Scientists have performed a micro-probe analysis of the core and outer layers of a pea-sized piece of a meteorite some 4.57 billion years old to reconstruct the history of its formation, providing the first evidence that dust particles like this one experienced wildly varying environments during the planet-forming years of our solar system. http://phys.org/news218383737.html Space & Earth Thu, 03 Mar 2011 14:09:12 EST news218383737 Early in the formation of the Earth, some forms of the element chromium separated and disappeared deep into the planet's core, a new study by UC Davis geologists shows. http://phys.org/news217778443.html Space & Earth Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:01:02 EST news217778443 (PhysOrg.com) -- Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope an international team of astronomers has been able to study the short-lived disc of material around a young star that is in the early stages of making a planetary system. For the first time a smaller companion could be detected that may be the cause of the large gap found in the disc. Future observations will determine whether this companion is a planet or a brown dwarf. http://phys.org/news217760495.html Space & Earth Thu, 24 Feb 2011 09:02:06 EST news217760495