The granite couldn’t have formed the same way that it does on Earth—with liquid water and plate tectonics. So how did it get there?
solar system
Posted inResearch Spotlights
Decrypting Lunar Craters Quickly and Easily
Machine learning can reveal the stories written in the marks on the Moon.
Posted inScience Updates
The Nitty-Gritty Forces That Shape Planetary Surfaces
Scientists are coming up with ingenious ways to compare terrestrial sand dunes, dust storms, and rain with their counterparts on Mars and Titan.
Posted inNews
Saturn’s Shiny Rings May Be Pretty Young
The rings are fairly shiny despite being bombarded by dust, indicating that they haven’t been around for very long.
Posted inNews
A Mission to Uranus Could Help Find Planet 9
Narrowing down the search is essential for gaining time on a high-powered telescope that could spot the hypothesized planet directly.
Posted inNews
Molten Meteorites Didn’t Deliver Earth’s Water
A new study has ruled out large, once-molten meteorites called achondrites as sources of Earth’s water.
Posted inNews
Quaoar’s Ring Defies Gravity
The dwarf planet’s ring makes astronomers question whether a long-held theory about ring and moon formation needs tweaking.
Posted inNews
Mercury Isn’t Alone in Orbit, and Scientists Don’t Know Why
A cloud of dust traces the innermost planet’s orbital path. By all accounts, it shouldn’t be there.
Posted inNews
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test Is a Smashing Success
The mission, focused on the Didymos-Dimorphos binary asteroid system, proved that an asteroid’s orbit can be altered by kinetic impactor technology.
Posted inFeatures
Marine Science Goes to Space
Space and ocean scientists take a splash course in multidisciplinary science to chart our solar system’s ocean worlds.