News tagged with planetary mass

Greenland's current loss of ice mass

The Greenland ice sheet continues to lose mass and thus contributes at about 0.7 millimeters per year to the currently observed sea level change of about 3 mm per year. This trend increases each year by a further 0.07 millimeters ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created May 29, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (5) | comments 0

Could Siberian volcanism have caused the Earth's largest extinction event?

Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian geologic period, there was a mass extinction so severe that it remains the most traumatic known species die-off in Earth's history. Although the cause ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Jan 09, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (3) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Three new planets and a mystery object discovered outside our solar system

(PhysOrg.com) -- Three planets -- each orbiting its own giant, dying star -- have been discovered by an international research team led by a Penn State University astronomer. Using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, astronomers ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 27, 2011 | popularity 4.4 / 5 (13) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Stellar winds

(PhysOrg.com) -- The Sun, glowing with a surface temperature of about 5500 degrees Celsius, warms the Earth with its salutary light. Meanwhile the Sun's hot outer layer (the corona), with its temperature of ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 10, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 7 | with audio podcast

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 ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Sep 16, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (11) | comments 38

Oldest objects in solar system indicate a turbulent beginning

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have found that calcium, aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs), some of the oldest objects in the solar system, formed far away from our sun and then later fell back into the mid-plane ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Mar 03, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (4) | comments 13 | with audio podcast

Keck Telescopes Take Deeper Look at Planetary Nurseries

(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers using the W. M. Keck Observatory have peered far into a young planetary system, giving an unprecedented view of dust and gas that might eventually form planets similar to Jupiter, ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Dec 23, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (13) | comments 2