Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology have demonstrated that the relatively high levels of precious metals (gold, platinum, etc.) in the Earth's mantle likely originated from one large-scale planetary impact prior to ...
Space Exploration
Oct 6, 2016
3
1
A team of astronomers has confirmed the existence of a young planet, only 11 million years old, that orbits very close to its star (at 0.05 AU), with an orbital period of 5.4 days. Approximately 5 times the size of the Earth, ...
Astronomy
Jun 21, 2016
0
56
The Earth's atmosphere contains oxygen because plants continuously produce it through photosynthesis. This abundant supply of oxygen allows life forms like animals to flourish. Therefore, oxygen had been thought to be an ...
Astronomy
Sep 10, 2015
5
228
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
1
1293
Studies of materials on the surface of Vesta offer new evidence that the giant asteroid is the source of howardite, eucrite and diogenite (HED) basaltic meteorites, supporting current models of solar system evolution and ...
Space Exploration
Jul 23, 2015
2
31
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
1
100
New work from Carnegie's Alan Boss offers a potential solution to a longstanding problem in the prevailing theory of how rocky planets formed in our own Solar System, as well as in others. The snag he's untangling: how dust ...
Astronomy
Jun 25, 2015
0
732
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
The vast quantity of planets and planetary candidates identified by NASA's Kepler spacecraft has revealed an array of systems. Some have Jupiter-sized planets close to the Sun, while others show only a handful of planets. ...
Astronomy
Jun 8, 2015
7
81
A Sun-like star with orbiting planets, dating back to the dawn of the Galaxy, has been discovered by an international team of astronomers.
Astronomy
Jan 27, 2015
25
635
