One of the hardest things to calculate for an asteroid is its mass—but it is such a critical feature. It determines how much of an impact it would have if it hits something, or how many resources are potentially available ...
Astronomy
Jun 16, 2026
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11
Our search for technosignatures—clear signs of advanced civilizations beyond Earth—takes many forms. Many are driven by the famous Drake equation, which attempts to estimate how many technological civilizations there are ...
Astrobiology
Jun 16, 2026
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13
Italian astronomers have used the Very Large Telescope (VLT) to perform polarimetric observations of the star WRAY 15-1880 and its young circumstellar disk. Results of the new observations, presented June 10 on the arXiv ...
Venus' bizarre and extraordinarily slow retrograde rotation on its axis has long puzzled planetary scientists. But in a new paper presented at the recent European Geosciences Union General Assembly in Vienna, the authors ...
Planetary Sciences
Jun 15, 2026
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43
Caltech researchers have identified a novel chemical reaction that could explain the formation of the building blocks of DNA and RNA, the molecules that encode all of life's functions. The work is an important step toward ...
Astrobiology
Jun 15, 2026
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40
Debris is still raining down on Earth more than 100 million years after the giant cosmic explosion that created it. A study published this week in Nature Astronomy by an international team reached this conclusion using measurements ...
Astrobiology
Jun 15, 2026
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290
A team of astronomers, led by Brooke Kotten of the University of Michigan, has shown that TOI-5882—a sunlike star located some 1,300 light-years away—has likely eaten one of its planets.
Astronomy
Jun 15, 2026
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84
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is a unique environment in our solar system. It is the only moon (or body beyond Earth) to have a dense, nitrogen-rich atmosphere, and its methane cycle is very similar to Earth's hydrological ...
Planetary Sciences
Jun 15, 2026
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115
Sulfur is one of the most abundant elements in the universe. If you peer into a diffuse interstellar cloud, you find loads of it—about the amount expected based on fusion patterns in the stars it was born in. However, if ...
Astrobiology
Jun 14, 2026
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48
A debate has been raging among planetary scientists for more than a decade—why are there so few exoplanets with a radius of about 1.8 times that of Earth? Exoplanets are currently largely grouped into two distinct categories—"super-Earths" ...
Planetary Sciences
Jun 14, 2026
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