Search results for planetesimals

Astronomy Mar 24, 2020

Solar system acquired current configuration not long after its formation

The hypothesis that the solar system originated from a gigantic cloud of gas and dust was first floated in the second half of the 18th century by German philosopher Immanuel Kant and further developed by French mathematician ...

Astronomy May 28, 2019

Giant planets and comets battling in the circumstellar disk around HD 163296

In a study appearing today in the Astrophysical Journal, an INAF-lead team of researchers explored whether the anomalous features in the dust and gas distributions of HD 163296's disk revealed by ALMA's observations could ...

Earth Sciences Dec 8, 2010

Study suggests that trace amounts of water created oceans on Earth, other terrestrial planets

One question that has baffled planetary scientists is how oceans formed on the surface of terrestrial planets like Earth — rocky planets made of silicate and metals. It’s believed that in additionzq to Earth, the ...

Astronomy Apr 17, 2015

Planet formation relied on sweeping up of small glassy beads, new model suggests

New research proposes that chondrules, small glassy beads that make up the bulk of the most primitive meteorites, played a crucial role in the formation of planets. Simulations developed by scientists at the American Museum ...

Space Exploration Jul 8, 2013

Potential solution to meteorite mystery: Chondrules may have formed from high-pressure collisions in early solar system

(Phys.org) —A normally staid University of Chicago scientist has stunned many of his colleagues with his radical solution to a 135-year-old mystery in cosmochemistry. "I'm a fairly sober guy. People didn't know what to ...

Astronomy Mar 23, 2015

Wandering Jupiter accounts for our unusual solar system

Long before Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars formed, it seems that the inner solar system may have harbored a number of super-Earths—planets larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune. If so, those planets are long gone—broken ...

Space Exploration Dec 17, 2010

Earth's final growth spurt

What led to water on the interior of the Moon or the formation of the Borealis basin that covers 40 percent of the surface of Mars? And what caused at least some of Earth’s tilt — without which there would be no ...

Astronomy Oct 3, 2023

Study suggests large mound structures on Kuiper belt object Arrokoth may have common origin

A new study led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Planetary Scientist and Associate Vice President Dr. Alan Stern posits that the large, approximately 5-kilometer-long mounds that dominate the appearance of the larger ...

Astrobiology Apr 5, 2023

How were amino acids, one of the key building blocks of life, formed before the origin of life on Earth?

Our solar system formed from a molecular cloud, which was composed of gas and dust that was emitted into the interstellar medium (ISM), a vast space between stars. On collapse of the molecular cloud, the early sun was formed, ...

Space Exploration Aug 16, 2016

Tagish Lake meteorite may have come from Kuiper belt

(Phys.org)—A trio of researchers is suggesting that a meteorite retrieved from the surface of a frozen lake in Canada may have come from the Kuiper belt—which if true, would be the first to be so identified. In their ...

page 5 from 34