Sub-Neptunes are the most common type of planet in our galaxy. Bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, these worlds remain deeply mysterious because scientists still do not know what they are made of. What astronomers ...
Astronomy
Jul 10, 2026
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Stars like our sun are formed from the collapse of stellar objects called prestellar cores, cold and dense concentrations of gas and dust held together by gravity. While many questions remain about the exact mechanisms of ...
Astronomy
Jul 10, 2026
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We've talked plenty of times here about the infeasibility of launching a mirror big enough to directly image exoplanets using current rocket fairings—at least as long as we're not sending them 500-plus AU away to a gravitational ...
Astronomy
Jul 9, 2026
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21
This close-up view shows fragments of sulfur crystals, the first ever seen on the Red Planet.
Planetary Sciences
Jul 9, 2026
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66
The young planetary system of the 23-million-year-old star Beta Pictoris (short: Beta Pic) is regarded as an iconic circumstellar dust disk, which hosts at least three giant gas planets. Discovered in 2008 by direct imaging, ...
Planetary Sciences
Jul 9, 2026
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36
A new Southwest Research Institute-led study proposes a solution to a longstanding puzzle in planetary science: What caused the concentration, assembly, and preservation of millimeter-sized, spherical mineral grains within ...
Planetary Sciences
Jul 8, 2026
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21
Scientists from Queen's University Belfast have led an international team in the discovery of a rare new planet, which is larger than Jupiter and orbits a distant star every 180 days. Named NGTS-38 b, it is an exoplanet—a ...
Astronomy
Jul 8, 2026
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133
Building material samples from the University of Delaware spent six months mounted outside the International Space Station, where the harsh conditions of low Earth orbit tested their limits.
Space Exploration
Jul 8, 2026
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160
Hayabusa 2's primary mission is now well in the past. JAXA's asteroid-sampling spacecraft rendezvoused with asteroid Ryugu in June 2018. It studied the asteroid for 1.5 years and gathered a sample that was returned to Earth ...
Space Exploration
Jul 8, 2026
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41
When it comes to the search for life elsewhere in the universe, methane and other chemical compounds are seen as signs of biology because they are often produced by living microbes. However, scientists can be misled because ...
