Earth was long thought to be the only planet in our solar system with an ocean, but it is beginning to look as though there are underground oceans inside even the most surprising icy bodies.
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 ...
University of California, Santa Cruz Professor of Planetary Sciences Francis Nimmo recently co-authored a Science Advances paper about the internal structure of the dwarf planet Eris.
Economic transitions take time but do take place. New York City first became prominent as a trading city, with America's resources and farm goods delivered via the Erie Canal shipped out of the port of New York. Then, we ...
The Kuiper Belt, the vast region at the edge of our solar system populated by countless icy objects, is a treasure trove of scientific discoveries. The detection and characterization of Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), sometimes ...
Impact cratering happens on every solid body in the solar system. In fact, it is the dominant process affecting the surfaces on most extraterrestrial bodies today.
The Very Large Telescope (VLT) at Cerro Paranal in northern Chile, is undoubtedly one of the premier ground-based observatories. But a new infrared instrument recently installed on the telescope has made the VLT even better.
The solar system has eight planets. In 2006, astronomers reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet, the same class that contains Eris, Sedna, Quaoar, Ceres and perhaps many more solar system small bodies. These are defined approximately ...
Object 90377 Sedna—a distant trans-Neptunian object known best for its highly elliptical, 11,390-year long orbit—is currently on its way toward perihelion (its closest approach to the sun) in 2076. After that, Sedna will ...
Scientists have unraveled a fascinating new insight into how the landscape of the dwarf-planet Pluto has formed.
