New estimates show that a mineral likely common in these rocky planets’ interiors is resistant to melting, even at high temperatures.
planets
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Carbon-Rich Rocks May Have Cooled the Ancient Martian Atmosphere
Data from the Perseverance rover indicate abundant carbonates in Jezero Crater, a finding with implications for Mars’s climatic history.
Posted inNews
What Winds Whip Up Otherworldly Waves?
New research goes back to the basics to explain how atmospheric conditions affect the creation of wind-driven waves on other worlds.
Posted inNews
Titanic Shake-Up Could Explain Saturn’s Young Rings and Strange Moons
A new model shows how the migration of Titan could have destroyed another moon, creating Saturn’s rings and the moon Hyperion. And, the model suggests, this all happened in the past billion years.
Posted inFeatures
Small, Faint, or Fast, Rubin Will Find It
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is set to redraw the map of the solar system by discovering millions of small, fast-moving objects hidden all around us.
Posted inNews
Solar Flare Spotlights the Martian Ionosphere
A “lucky” linkup between orbiters helped scientists study how the Red Planet’s ionosphere responds to solar events.
Posted inNews
The Planet That Shouldn’t Be There
A newly discovered exoplanet suggests that a different way to build planetary systems could be possible.
Posted inNews
Planet-Eating Stars Hint at Earth’s Ultimate Fate
A sampling of aging Sun-like stars demonstrates that they likely eat their closest planets.
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Maybe That’s Not Liquid Water on Mars After All
A “very large roll” of a radar instrument offers new insight into a highly reflective area near the Martian south pole.
Posted inNews
Planets Might Form When Dust “Wobbles” in Just the Right Way
A liquid metal experiment has shown how magnetic rotational instability might allow dust to pool together in disks around young stars to form new worlds.