Hubble watches how a giant planet grows

Ever made a complete mess in your kitchen while baking? At moments it may look like flour is floating in the air, but once you've added plenty of water and formed your dough, the bread becomes more like a ball. A similar ...

Baked meteorites yield clues to planetary atmospheres

In a novel laboratory investigation of the initial atmospheres of Earth-like rocky planets, researchers at UC Santa Cruz heated pristine meteorite samples in a high-temperature furnace and analyzed the gases released.

A 'super-puff' planet like no other

The core mass of the giant exoplanet WASP-107b is much lower than what was thought necessary to build up the immense gas envelope surrounding giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn, astronomers at Université de Montréal ...

Why some planets eat their own skies

For many years, for all we knew, our solar system was alone in the universe. Then better telescopes began to reveal a treasure trove of planets circling distant stars.

Gas 'waterfalls' reveal infant planets around young star

The birthplaces of planets are disks made out of gas and dust. Astronomers study these so-called protoplanetary disks to understand the processes of planet formation. Beautiful images of disks made with the Atacama Large ...

Scientists find likely source of methane on Mars

The mystery of methane on Mars may finally be solved as scientists Monday confirmed the presence of the life-indicating gas on the Red Planet as well as where it might have come from.

Mantle neon illuminates Earth's formation

The Earth formed relatively quickly from the cloud of dust and gas around the Sun, trapping water and gases in the planet's mantle, according to research published Dec. 5 in the journal Nature. Apart from settling Earth's ...

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