A new planet starts its life in a rotating circle of gas and dust, a cradle known as a protostellar disk. My colleagues and I have used computer simulations to show that newborn gas planets in these disks are likely to have ...
Astronomy
Feb 17, 2024
1
41
Asteroids are remnants of the early Solar System, with the potential to reveal secrets of our planet's origins. But they could also bring an end to life on Earth. Now two missions, Lucy and DART (Double Asteroid Redirection ...
Space Exploration
Oct 15, 2021
0
34
Microplastics have reached the farthest corners of the Earth, including remote fjords and even the Mariana Trench, one of the deepest parts of the ocean. Recently, yet another distant area of our planet has been found to ...
Environment
Apr 2, 2021
2
216
A storm of tiny dust particles has engulfed much of Mars over the last two weeks and prompted NASA's Opportunity rover to suspend science operations. But across the planet, NASA's Curiosity rover, which has been studying ...
Space Exploration
Jun 20, 2018
4
327
How can you see the atmosphere? The answer is blowing in the wind. Tiny particles, known as aerosols, are carried by winds around the globe. This visualization uses data from NASA satellites combined with our knowledge of ...
Earth Sciences
Nov 16, 2017
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15
Mercury, our smallest planetary neighbor, has very little to call an atmosphere, but it does have a strange weather pattern: morning micro-meteor showers.
Space Exploration
Sep 29, 2017
0
310
Even tiny dust particles have stories to tell − especially when they come from outer space. Meteorites contain tiny amounts of what is popularly known as stardust, matter originating from dying stars. Such stardust is part ...
Space Exploration
Aug 15, 2017
0
38
LISA Pathfinder, a mission led by ESA (the European Space Agency) with contributions from NASA, has successfully demonstrated critical technologies needed to build a space-based observatory for detecting ripples in space-time ...
Space Exploration
Apr 17, 2017
0
54
Astronomers found signs of a growing planet around TW Hydra, a nearby young star, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Based on the distance from the central star and the distribution of tiny dust ...
Astronomy
Sep 14, 2016
6
34
NASA recently reported that a cloud of dust was surrounding Mars high above its atmosphere. The authors of the study ruled out Mars itself and its moons Phobos and Deimos as the sources of the dust and concluded that it must ...
Space Exploration
Nov 16, 2015
0
110
