(PhysOrg.com) -- Just as an expert chess player sacrifices a piece to protect the queen, the solar system may have given up a giant planet and spared the Earth, according to an article recently published in The Astrophysical ...
Astronomy
Nov 10, 2011
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Using data collected by NASA's STEREO spacecraft, researchers at Southwest Research Institute and the National Solar Observatory have developed the first detailed images of solar wind structures as plasma and other particles ...
Space Exploration
Aug 18, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Planetary scientists have long wondered why Mars is only about half the size and one-tenth the mass of Earth. As next-door neighbors in the inner solar system, probably formed about the same time, why isn't ...
Astronomy
Jun 5, 2011
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Simulations performed at Southwest Research Institute may explain how Saturn's majestic rings and icy inner moons formed following the collision of a Titan-sized satellite with the planet, according to a paper published in ...
Space Exploration
Dec 12, 2010
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The unusual "knot" in the bright, narrow ribbon of neutral atoms emanating in from the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space appears to have "untied," according to a paper published online ...
Space Exploration
Sep 30, 2010
5
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Many of the most well known comets, including Halley, Hale-Bopp and, most recently, McNaught, may have been born in orbit around other stars, according to a new theory by an international team of astronomers led by a scientist ...
Astronomy
Jun 10, 2010
9
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Differences in the number and speed of cometary impacts onto Jupiter's large moons Ganymede and Callisto some 3.8 billion years ago can explain their vastly different surfaces and interior states, according ...
Space Exploration
Jan 24, 2010
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Many of the objects found today in the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter may have formed in the outermost reaches of the solar system, according to an international team of astronomers led by scientists ...
Space Exploration
Jul 15, 2009
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A team co-led by Southwest Research Institute found evidence for hydrothermal or metamorphic activity within the icy dwarf planets Eris and Makemake, located in the Kuiper Belt. Methane detected on their surfaces has the ...
Astronomy
Feb 15, 2024
0
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Using data from the retired Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA)—a joint project of NASA and the German Space Agency at DLR—Southwest Research Institute scientists have discovered, for the first time, ...
Astrobiology
Feb 12, 2024
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