For the first time, astronomers have detected the presence of complex organic molecules, the building blocks of life, in a protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star, suggesting once again that the conditions that spawned ...
Astronomy
Apr 8, 2015
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How did the Solar System's planets come to be? The leading theory is something known as the "protoplanet hypothesis", which essentially says that very small objects stuck to each other and grew bigger and bigger—big enough ...
Space Exploration
Jan 30, 2015
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Asteroids may be a byproduct of planet formation rather than planetary building blocks, according to a recent paper in Nature.
Space Exploration
Jan 14, 2015
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In the search for life beyond our solar system, we need to consider the system in which a planet moves, including the other planets and assorted debris that accompany it on its journey through the cosmos.
Space Exploration
Dec 9, 2014
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(Phys.org) —A pair of astronomers with the University of California has demonstrated via computer simulation that the reason some hot or warm Jupiter exoplanets orbit their star so closely is because they are pulled there ...
Work presented today at the Goldschmidt Geochemistry Conference in Sacramento, California shows that the timing of the giant impact between Earth's ancestor and a planet-sized body occurred around 40 million years after the ...
Space Exploration
Jun 10, 2014
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(Phys.org) —A combined team of researchers from Germany, Switzerland and the U.S. has found evidence of faster than thought core formation of planetesimals in our solar system. In their paper published in the journal Science, ...
Water ice is the most abundant solid material in the universe. Much of it was created as the byproduct of star formation, but not all. John Bradley of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and his team may have discovered ...
Space Exploration
Jan 21, 2014
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The Kuiper belt—the region beyond the orbit of Neptune inhabited by a number of small bodies of rock and ice—hides many clues about the early days of the Solar System. According to the standard picture of Solar System ...
Astronomy
Jan 17, 2014
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An international team of astronomers, led by a University of Arizona graduate student, has discovered the most distantly orbiting planet found to date around a single, sun-like star. It is the first exoplanet – a planet ...
Astronomy
Dec 5, 2013
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