When the Voyager 2 spacecraft visited Uranus almost 50 years ago, it discovered a magnetic mystery. Unlike on most planets, the ice giant's magnetic field is tilted roughly 60° away from its spin axis, creating an asymmetric ...
Planetary Sciences
Jul 1, 2024
0
74
Spring, summer, fall and winter—the seasons on Earth change every few months, around the same time every year. It's easy to take this cycle for granted here on Earth, but not every planet has a regular change in seasons. ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 10, 2024
1
12
The alignment between galaxy spins and the large-scale structure of the universe reveals the processes by which different components of galaxies form.
Astronomy
Oct 4, 2022
159
192
This feature could easily be mistaken for a tree stump with characteristic concentric rings. It's actually an impressive birds-eye view into an ice-rich impact crater on Mars. Tree rings provide snapshots of Earth's past ...
Space Exploration
Jan 28, 2022
0
77
Europa's outer icy shell has completely reoriented itself in one of the last geologic events recorded on its young surface. Europa's poles are not where they used to be. Cracks in the surface of Jupiter's icy moon indicate ...
Space Exploration
Aug 21, 2020
2
493
Imagine that the size of a bacterium is measured from a distance of about 4500 light-years. This would be an incredible measurement, considering that a bacterium is so small that a microscope is required to see it, and what ...
Astronomy
Aug 20, 2020
0
270
Astronomers have made the first measurement of spin-orbit alignment for a distant 'super-Jupiter' planet, demonstrating a technique that could enable breakthroughs in the quest to understand how exoplanetary systems form ...
Astronomy
Jun 29, 2020
1
667
Astronomers using data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have shown that Alpha Draconis, a well-studied star visible to the naked eye, and its fainter companion star regularly eclipse each other. While ...
Astronomy
Jan 7, 2020
0
221
There's an oddball in most families, but Rice University physicist Emilia Morosan has discovered an entire clan of eccentric compounds that could help explain the mysterious electronic and magnetic workings of other quantum ...
General Physics
Dec 21, 2018
1
259
It's happened before, and it could happen again.
Earth Sciences
Dec 21, 2018
39
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