https://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. Neptune's far-flung moon Nereid may be the last of the planet's original companions that managed to survive a cosmic crash, scientists reported Wednesday. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-neptune-mysterious-moon-nereid-survivor.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 20 May 2026 15:55:54 EDT news698511286 Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found evidence that the spinning of a small comet slowed and then reversed its direction of rotation, offering a dramatic example of how volatile activity can affect the spin and physical evolution of small bodies in the solar system. This is the first time researchers have observed evidence of a comet reversing its spin. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-hubble-reversal-tiny-comet.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 26 Mar 2026 15:20:02 EDT news693746521 For the first time, a much younger version of the sun has been caught red-handed blowing bubbles in the galaxy by astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The bubble—called an "astrosphere"—completely surrounds the juvenile star. Winds from the star's surface are blowing up the bubble and filling it with hot gas as it expands into much cooler galactic gas and dust surrounding the star. The sun has a similar bubble around it, which scientists call the heliosphere, created by the solar wind. It extends far beyond the planets in our solar system and protects Earth from damaging particles from interstellar space. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-young-sun-caught-chandra.html Astronomy Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:40:09 EST news691081751 Astronomers have long debated why so many icy objects in the outer solar system look like snowmen. Michigan State University researchers now have evidence of the surprisingly simple process that could be responsible for their creation. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-space-snowmen-gravitational-collapse-contact.html Astronomy Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:00:15 EST news690567661 Astronomers have long sought evidence to explain why comets at the outskirts of our own solar system contain crystalline silicates, since crystals require intense heat to form and these "dirty snowballs" spend most of their time in the ultracold Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. Now, looking outside our solar system, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has returned the first conclusive evidence that links how those conditions are possible. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-webb-young-sun-star-forging.html Astronomy Wed, 21 Jan 2026 14:55:41 EST news688229701 Astronomers have, for the first time, captured a detailed snapshot of planetary systems in an era long shrouded in mystery. The ALMA survey to Resolve exoKuiper belt Substructures (ARKS), using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), has produced the sharpest images ever of 24 debris disks, the dusty belts left after planets finish forming. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-alma-reveals-teenage-years-worlds.html Astronomy Tue, 20 Jan 2026 02:00:01 EST news688046158 Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have imaged the largest protoplanetary disk ever observed circling a young star. For the first time in visible light, Hubble has revealed the disk is unexpectedly chaotic and turbulent, with wisps of material stretching much farther above and below the disk than astronomers have seen in any similar system. Strangely, more extended filaments are only visible on one side of the disk. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-chaotic-dracula-chivito-hubble-reveals.html Astronomy Tue, 23 Dec 2025 09:30:01 EST news685629586 Observations with the instrument SPHERE at ESO's Very Large Telescope have produced an unprecedented gallery of "debris disks" in exoplanetary systems. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-debris-disk-gallery-tale-asteroids.html Astronomy Wed, 03 Dec 2025 03:00:02 EST news683911862 A vast region of our solar system, called the Kuiper belt, stretches from the orbit of Neptune out to 50 or so astronomical units (AU), where an AU is the distance between Earth and the sun. This region consists mostly of icy objects and small rocky bodies, like Pluto. Scientists believe Kuiper belt objects (KPOs) are remnants left over from the formation of the solar system. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-potentially-distinct-kuiper-belt-clustering.html Astronomy Fri, 21 Nov 2025 14:00:05 EST news682951980 An international team of astronomers have employed the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe a nearby M-dwarf star known as TWA 20. As a result, they detected a large debris disk around this star. The finding was reported in a paper published October 23 on the arXiv pre-print server. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-jwst-large-debris-disk-nearby.html Astronomy Tue, 28 Oct 2025 09:00:03 EDT news680860723 University of Warwick astronomers have uncovered the chemical fingerprint of a frozen, water-rich planetary fragment being consumed by a white dwarf star outside our solar system. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-icy-planetesimal-high-nitrogen-content.html Astrobiology Sat, 27 Sep 2025 08:30:01 EDT news677752155 In our nearby stellar neighborhood, a burned-out star is snacking on a fragment of a Pluto-like object. With its unique ultraviolet capability, only NASA's Hubble Space Telescope could identify that this meal is taking place. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-hubble-white-dwarf-piece-pluto.html Astronomy Thu, 18 Sep 2025 12:06:03 EDT news677415961 Astronomers have discovered what they think may be another moon orbiting a distant dwarf planet called Quaoar. This small, icy, egg-shaped planet in the far reaches of our solar system, beyond Neptune, is already known to have two rings and a moon, but this discovery was unexpected and accidental. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-discovery-moon-orbiting-mysterious-distant.html Astronomy Thu, 11 Sep 2025 10:20:05 EDT news676804630 Asteroid Bennu—the target of NASA's OSIRIS-REx sample return mission, led by the University of Arizona—is a mixture of materials from throughout, and even beyond, our solar system. Over the past few billion years, its unique and varied contents have been transformed by interactions with water and the harsh space environment. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-asteroid-bennu-capsule-materials-witness.html Astronomy Fri, 22 Aug 2025 10:38:04 EDT news675077881 As NASA's New Horizons spacecraft traveled through the Kuiper Belt at a distance of more than 5.5 billion miles from Earth, an international team of astronomers used the far-flung probe to conduct an unprecedented experiment: the first-ever successful demonstration of deep space stellar navigation. https://phys.org/news/2025-07-horizons-successful-deep-space-stellar.html Astronomy Fri, 04 Jul 2025 07:40:01 EDT news670827565 A group of astronomers from across the globe, including a team from the University of Washington and led by Queen's University Belfast, have revealed new research showing that millions of new solar system objects will be detected by a brand-new facility, which is expected to come online later in 2025. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-rubin-observatory-millions-solar-vivid.html Astronomy Wed, 04 Jun 2025 10:29:18 EDT news668251752 It's an evocative idea that has long bedeviled scientists: a huge and mysterious planet is lurking in the darkness at the edge of our solar system, evading all our efforts to spot it. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-mysterious-planet.html Planetary Sciences Thu, 29 May 2025 05:01:31 EDT news667713684 Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and elsewhere have detected water ice in a debris disk around HD 181327—a young star located within 160 light years away from the Earth. The finding was reported in a paper published May 14 in the journal Nature. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-ice-debris-disk-young-nearby.html Astronomy Mon, 26 May 2025 09:41:08 EDT news667471259 A small team led by Sihao Cheng, Martin A. and Helen Chooljian Member in the Institute for Advanced Study's School of Natural Sciences, has discovered an extraordinary trans-Neptunian object (TNO), named 2017 OF201, at the edge of our solar system. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-extreme-cousin-pluto-dwarf-planet.html Astronomy Thu, 22 May 2025 10:37:10 EDT news667129026 Is frozen water scattered in systems around other stars? Astronomers have long expected it is, partially based on previous detections of its gaseous form, water vapor, and its presence in our own solar system. https://phys.org/news/2025-05-webb-frozen-young-star.html Astronomy Wed, 14 May 2025 13:09:56 EDT news666446983 NASA's Lucy spacecraft will swoop past a small asteroid this weekend as it makes its way to an even bigger prize: the unexplored swarms of asteroids out near Jupiter. https://phys.org/news/2025-04-nasa-lucy-spacecraft-encounter-asteroid.html Planetary Sciences Fri, 18 Apr 2025 12:42:41 EDT news664198957 The puzzle of predicting how three gravitationally bound bodies move in space has challenged mathematicians for centuries, and has most recently been popularized in the novel and television show "3 Body Problem." There's no problem, however, with what a team of researchers say is likely a stable trio of icy space rocks in the solar system's Kuiper Belt, found using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the ground-based W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-hubble-kuiper-belt-duo-trio.html Astronomy Tue, 04 Mar 2025 12:46:03 EST news660314761 When Earth first formed, it was too hot to retain ice. This means all the water on our planet must have originated from extraterrestrial sources. Studies of ancient terrestrial rocks suggest liquid water existed on Earth as early as 100 million years after the sun's formation–practically "immediately" on an astrophysical timescale. This water, now over 4.5 billion years old, has been perpetually renewed through Earth's water cycle. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-theory-earth.html Astrobiology Mon, 17 Feb 2025 13:17:04 EST news659020621 For the first time, astronomers have imaged dozens of belts around nearby stars where comets and tiny pebbles within them are orbiting. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-astronomers-largest-comets-solar.html Astronomy Tue, 11 Feb 2025 14:45:03 EST news658507501 Astrophysicists led by a team from Trinity College Dublin have—for the first time—imaged a large number of exocomet belts around nearby stars, and the tiny pebbles within them. The crystal-clear images show light being emitted from these millimeter-sized pebbles within the belts that orbit 74 nearby stars of a wide variety of ages—from those that are just emerging from birth to those in more mature systems like our own solar system. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-astrophysicists-reveal-exocomet-belts-orbiting.html Astronomy Fri, 17 Jan 2025 03:00:01 EST news656240915 Trying to understand the makeup and evolution of the solar system's Kuiper belt has kept researchers busy since it was hypothesized soon after the discovery of Pluto in 1930. In particular, binary pairs of objects there are useful as indicators since their existence today paints a picture of how energetic or violent the evolution of the solar system was in its early days four billion years ago. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-ultrawide-binary-kuiper-belt-earliest.html Astronomy Tue, 26 Nov 2024 07:25:11 EST news651756713 Identifying asteroids on a potential collision course with Earth could be made easier thanks to an advancement in how to track their orbits more precisely. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-earth-bound-asteroids-tracked-precisely.html Planetary Sciences Mon, 25 Nov 2024 12:05:15 EST news651758709 A Southwest Research Institute-led team combined compositional data of primitive bodies like Kuiper Belt objects, asteroids and comets with new solar data sets to develop a revised solar composition that potentially reconciles spectroscopy and helioseismology measurements for the first time. Helioseismology probes the sun's interior by analyzing the waves that travel through it, while spectroscopy reveals the surface composition based on the spectral signature produced by each chemical element. https://phys.org/news/2024-11-team-solar-composition-ratios-longstanding.html Astronomy Tue, 12 Nov 2024 12:25:03 EST news650636701 NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and New Horizons spacecraft simultaneously set their sights on Uranus recently, allowing scientists to make a direct comparison of the planet from two very different viewpoints. The results inform future plans to study like types of planets around other stars. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-hubble-horizons-dual-perspectives-uranus.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 09 Oct 2024 16:41:02 EDT news647710858 Inspired by the half-human, half-horse creatures that are part of Ancient Greek mythology, the field of astronomy has its own kind of centaurs: distant objects orbiting the sun between Jupiter and Neptune. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has mapped the gases spewing from one of these objects, suggesting a varied composition and providing new insights into the formation and evolution of the solar system. https://phys.org/news/2024-10-webb-telescope-unusual-gas-jets.html Astronomy Wed, 02 Oct 2024 13:22:48 EDT news647094153