How large can a planet be?

Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. In terms of mass, Jupiter dwarfs the other planets. If you were to gather all the other planets together into a single mass, Jupiter would still be 2.5 times more massive. ...

Has the Earth's sixth mass extinction already arrived?

With the steep decline in populations of many animal species, from frogs and fish to tigers, some scientists have warned that Earth is on the brink of a mass extinction like those that occurred only five times before during ...

When will a neutron star collapse to a black hole?

Neutron stars are the most extreme and fascinating objects known to exist in our universe: Such a star has a mass that is up to twice that of the sun but a radius of only a dozen kilometres: hence it has an enormous density, ...

Asteroid Ryugu likely link in planetary formation

The solar system formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. Numerous fragments that bear witness to this early era orbit the sun as asteroids. Around three-quarters of these are carbon-rich C-type asteroids, such as 162173 ...

Rocky planets could have been born as gas giants

When NASA announced the discovery of over 1,200 new potential planets spotted by the Kepler Space Telescope, almost a quarter of them were thought to be Super-Earths. Now, new research suggests that these massive rocky planets ...

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