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 ...

Opening a 50-year-old Christmas present from the moon

A pretty special gift unwrapping will soon take place—a piercing tool built by ESA will open a moon soil container from Apollo 17 that has gone untouched for nearly 50 years. The opening will allow the extraction of precious ...

Meet VMS: The briefcase-sized chemistry lab headed to Venus

Short for Venus Mass Spectrometer, VMS is one of five instruments aboard the DAVINCI descent probe. Launching in 2029, DAVINCI will be the first US probe mission to enter Venus' atmosphere in over 40 years. The goal of the ...

Toward the scaling up of nanocages to trap noble gases

Over the past few years, scientists have demonstrated how cage-like, porous structures made of silicon and oxygen and measuring only billionths of a meter in size can trap noble gasses like argon, krypton, and xenon. However, ...

Solar wind from the center of the Earth

High-precision noble gas analyses indicate that solar wind particles from our primordial Sun were encased in the Earth's core over 4.5 billion years ago. Researchers from the Institute of Earth Sciences at Heidelberg University ...

A deep reservoir of primordial helium in the Earth

Noble gases, including helium, neon, and argon, are characterized by high chemical inertness which causes low reactivity with other materials and high volatility. Among them, 3He, 20Ne, and 36Ar are particular isotopes which ...

Parsing routes to aquifer recharge along mountain fronts

In many semiarid and arid regions around the world, groundwater drawn from basin-fill aquifers sustains local agriculture and large cities. Such aquifers are typically replenished by high-elevation precipitation and snowmelt ...

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