Scattered Light Gaps in Protoplanetary Disks Don’t Always Signal Planets
New research from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics shows that a gap in the dusty disk circling a star could be a sort of cosmic…
Planet Formation
Suzaku Finds Mg, Si, and S Extending Out Beyond the Virial Radius of a Ccluster of Galaxies
Using Japan’s Suzaku X-ray satellite, a team of astronomers present the first measurements of the abundances of iron, magnesium, silicon and sulfur in four directions…
Theoretical Study Suggests Most Earth-Like Worlds Have Yet to Be Born
Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, a newly published study reveals that when our solar system was born less than ten percent of the…
Gradual Accumulation Planetary Pebbles Formed Gas-Giant Planets
In a newly published study a team of astronomers reveals the mystery of how Jupiter and Saturn likely formed. This discovery, which changes our view…
SOFIA Reveals Missing Link Between Supernovae and Planet Formation
A newly published study reveals that supernovae are capable of producing enough material to form planets. Using NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), an…
ALMA Reveals Birth of Planets in Astonishing Detail
While testing the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array’s new high-resolution capabilities, astronomers captured the best image ever of planet formation around an infant star. This revolutionary…
Pebble-Size Particles May Represent a New Class of Interstellar Particles
A team of astronomers has discovered that filaments of star-forming gas near the Orion Nebula may be brimming with pebble-size particles. If confirmed, these particles…
NASA Study Reveals Debris Disks Don’t Need Planets to Form Patterns
A new model developed by scientists at NASA shows that eccentric rings in debris disks can form without planets. Many young stars known to host…
Hubble Reveals Evidence of a Planet Forming 7.5 Billion Miles from Its Star
Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered evidence that a planet is forming 7.5 billion miles away from its star in a vast protoplanetary…
Diogenites Provide Clues of the Earliest Days of Our Solar System
Scientists from the Carnegie Institution for Science are focusing on an old type of meteorite called diogenites to gain a better understanding of the earliest…
New Disk Model Better Explains Why the Earth is a Dry Planet
While analyzing the common accretion-disk model explaining how planets form in a debris disk around the Sun, scientists found that a newly proposed disk model…
Worlds like Earth Could Have Formed Earlier than Expected
Newly published research shows that planets smaller than Neptune are located around a wide variety of stars, including those with fewer heavy elements than the…
Saturn’s Moon Phoebe has Planet-Like Qualities
More than 60 moons orbit Saturn and by combining data from NASA’s Cassini mission with modeling techniques, scientists have so far been able to identify…
Curious Findings from Early Stages of Planet Formation
While using infrared spectra from the Spitzer Space Telescope to analyze the dust in several young brown dwarf disks, scientists discovered that the cold outer…
Simulations Show Jupiter’s Core is Liquefying
Scientists now have a better understanding of gas giant exoplanets and what is going on in their cores. By studying computer simulations, scientists believe that…
Earth’s Continental Crust Growth Rate has Decreased
Newly published research shows that the growth rate of the Earth’s continental crust has decreased significantly over the last three billion years, leaving researchers to…
Researchers Present New Model for Planetary Accretion
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have come up with a new explanation for planetary accretion. By using classical physics and the laws of…
Researchers Examine Phase Changes for Insight to Planet Formation
Researchers have gained a deeper insight into planet formation by studying the phase changes between different types of melts. Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory…