Search results for solar system small body

Astronomy 7 hours ago

Finding the age of a contact binary 'moon'

There are millions of asteroids floating around the solar system. With so many of them, it should be no surprise that some are weirdly configured. A recent example of one of these weird configurations was discovered when ...

Environment May 21, 2024

Five ways to keep towns cool in a heat wave

Along with warmer and wetter winters across the UK and Europe, our summers are getting hotter with more frequent periods of extreme hot weather. And as well as affecting agriculture, infrastructure and wildlife, hot weather ...

Planetary Sciences May 21, 2024

Peering into Pluto's ocean using mathematical models and images from the New Horizons spacecraft

An ocean of liquid water deep beneath the icy surface of Pluto is coming into focus thanks to new calculations by Alex Nguyen, a graduate student in Earth, environmental and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington ...

Astronomy May 10, 2024

Is dark matter's main rival theory dead? The Cassini spacecraft and other recent tests may invalidate MOND

One of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics today is that the forces in galaxies do not seem to add up. Galaxies rotate much faster than predicted by applying Newton's law of gravity to their visible matter, despite those ...

Evolution May 10, 2024

Why evolution often favors small animals and other organisms

Small really does seem to be beautiful in evolutionary terms. The largest dinosaurs, pterosaurs and mammals may look impressive but these giants are vastly outnumbered by microscopic bacteria and single-celled algae and fungi. ...

Planetary Sciences May 9, 2024

TESS discovers a rocky planet that glows with molten lava as it's squeezed by its neighbors

UC Riverside astrophysicist Stephen Kane had to double-check his calculations. He wasn't sure the planet he was studying could be as extreme as it seemed.

Planetary Sciences May 8, 2024

Exploring the asteroid Apophis with small satellites

The author of a disaster novel couldn't have dreamed it up any better: On a Friday, the thirteenth of all days, the potentially dangerous asteroid (99942) Apophis will come extremely close to humanity.

Astronomy May 3, 2024

Hungry, hungry white dwarfs: Solving the puzzle of stellar metal pollution

Dead stars known as white dwarfs, have a mass like the sun while being similar in size to Earth. They are common in our galaxy, as 97% of stars will eventually become white dwarfs. As stars reach the end of their lives, their ...

Astronomy Apr 30, 2024

Novel calculations peg age of 'baby' asteroid

An asteroid dubbed "Lucy's baby" after a NASA spacecraft discovered it is orbiting another asteroid last November is,, in fact,, a solar system toddler—just 2–3 million years old, a Cornell-led research team estimates ...

Astronomy Apr 30, 2024

Clouds blanket the night side of the hot exoplanet WASP-43b

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a team of astronomers, including scientists from MPIA, constructed a global temperature map of the hot, gas giant exoplanet WASP-43b. The nearby parent star perpetually illuminates ...

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