Why is Earth so dry?

(Phys.org) -- With large swaths of oceans, rivers that snake for hundreds of miles, and behemoth glaciers near the north and south poles, Earth doesn't seem to have a water shortage. And yet, less than one percent of our ...

White dwarf stars' debris disk formation delayed

White dwarfs, the glowing cores of dead stars, often host disks of dusty debris. However, these debris disks only appear 10 to 20 millions of years following the star's violent Red Giant phase. A new paper by Planetary Science ...

Massive gas disk raises questions about planet formation theory

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) found a young star surrounded by an astonishing mass of gas. The star, called 49 Ceti, is 40 million years old and conventional theories of planet ...

Giant exoplanet hunters: Look for debris disks

There's no map showing all the billions of exoplanets hiding in our galaxy—they're so distant and faint compared to their stars, it's hard to find them. Now, astronomers hunting for new worlds have established a possible ...

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