The Death Star of the movie Star Wars may be fictional, but planetary destruction is real. Astronomers announced today that they have spotted a large, rocky object disintegrating in its death spiral around a distant white ...
Astronomy
Oct 21, 2015
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1292
Astronomers estimate that at the time the Solar system formed, its proto-planetary disk contained the equivalent of about twenty Jupiter-masses of gas and dust. This so-called "minimum mass solar nebula (MMSN)" is derived ...
Astronomy
Oct 19, 2015
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906
The quest for potentially habitable planets is often interpreted as the search for an Earth twin. And yet, some rocky planets outside our Solar System may in fact be more promising candidates for further research. Scientists ...
Astronomy
Sep 14, 2015
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86
A pilot study opens a new path to analysing the interior of rocky planets in the lab. The research team, led by the University of Edinburgh and including scientists from DESY, has created high pressures and temperatures like ...
General Physics
Sep 2, 2015
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12
As astronomers continue finding new rocky planets around distant stars, high-pressure physicists are considering what the interiors of those planets might be like and how their chemistry could differ from that found on Earth. ...
Astronomy
Sep 1, 2015
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1293
Science fiction movies about aliens threatening the Earth routinely ascribe them the motive of coming here to steal our resources, most often our water. This is ill thought-out, as water is actually extremely common. Any ...
Space Exploration
Aug 24, 2015
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113
Astronomers hunting for another Earth have found what may be the closest match yet, a potentially rocky planet circling its star at the same distance as the Earth orbits the Sun, NASA said Thursday.
Astronomy
Jul 23, 2015
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3052
Astronomers have used the ESO 3.6-metre telescope to identify a planet just like Jupiter orbiting at the same distance from a Sun-like star, HIP 11915. According to current theories, the formation of Jupiter-mass planets ...
Astronomy
Jul 15, 2015
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2285
Earth-like planets orbiting other stars in the Milky Way are three times more likely to have the same type of minerals as Earth than astronomers had previously thought. In fact, conditions for making the building blocks of ...
Astronomy
Jul 9, 2015
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100
There's something about our solar system that appears to be unusual. For some reason, most of our bigger planets are far away from our host star, while closer in are smaller, rocky worlds, including Earth itself.
Astronomy
Jun 23, 2015
1
515
