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.
unsolved mysteries
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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.
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Apollo Samples Told a Conflicting Story About Lunar Magnetism, Until Now
Observations suggested the Moon had both a weak and strong magnetic field in the distant past. A new study presents a theory accommodating all the evidence.
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The Planet That Shouldn’t Be There
A newly discovered exoplanet suggests that a different way to build planetary systems could be possible.
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COVID-19 Shutdowns Saw Human Emissions Slow, but Atmospheric Methane Surged
An uptick in wetland emissions, as well as a scarcity of atmospheric OH radicals, contributed to the counterintuitive methane spike.
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What do BLOBs Have to Do with Earth’s Magnetic Field? A Lot, It Turns Out
Enormous provinces of superheated mantle exert a powerful influence over our planet’s magnetic field, researchers have discovered.
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When the Snow Melts, Microbes Bloom
A new study illuminates a complex and changing world of microbes and nitrogen cycling that occurs during the winter.
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Rare Hot Jupiters Could Reveal How All Giant Planets Form
A new analysis shows that the way massive planets migrate after their formation helps determine whether they have companion planets. The process hints at planetary formation in general.
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Oozing Gas Could Be Making Stripes in Mercury’s Craters
Scientists are using new computational tools to analyze troves of old spacecraft data to better understand one of Mercury’s unsolved mysteries.
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Primordial Impact May Explain Why the Moon Is Asymmetrical
Analysis of surface samples from the Chang’e-6 mission suggests that an asteroid may have vaporized parts of the lunar mantle, suppressing volcanic activity on the farside of the Moon.