Team identifies parent body materials in Ryugu asteroid

An international team including a researcher from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has determined that one specific particle on the asteroid Ryugu can shed light on the unaltered initial materials from its parent ...

New model shows Earth's deep mantle was drier from the start

Earth's mantle is the thick layer of silicate rock between Earth's crust and its molten core, making up about 84% of our planet's volume. The mantle is predominantly solid but, on geologic time scales, it behaves as a viscous ...

When did the sun blow away the solar nebula?

The story of our solar system's origin is pretty well known. It goes like this: the sun began as a protostar in its "solar nebula" over 4.5 billion years ago. Over the course of several million years, the planets emerged ...

Dying stars could seed interstellar medium with carbon nanotubes

Evidence suggests that carbon nanotubes, tiny tubes consisting of pure carbon, could be forged in the envelopes of dust and gas surrounding dying stars. The findings propose a simple, yet elegant mechanism for the formation ...

Martian meteorite upsets planet formation theory

A new study of an old meteorite contradicts current thinking about how rocky planets like the Earth and Mars acquire volatile elements such as hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and noble gases as they form. The work is published ...

Earth and Mars were formed from inner solar system material

Earth and Mars were formed from material that largely originated in the inner solar system; only a few percent of the building blocks of these two planets originated beyond Jupiter's orbit. A group of researchers led by the ...

Finding the source of the impactor that wiped out the dinosaurs

The impactor believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs and other life forms on Earth some 66 million years ago likely came from the outer half of the main asteroid belt, a region previously thought to produce few impactors. ...

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