Category Astronomy/Space

The particular dynamics of the instability between the giant planets kept Mars from growing to an Earth-mass planet. Credit: University of Oklahoma

A University of Oklahoma astrophysics team explains why the growth of Mars was stunted by an orbital instability among the outer solar system’s giant planets in a new study on the evolution of the young solar system. The OU study builds on the widely-accepted Nice Model, which invokes a planetary instability to explain many peculiar observed aspects of the outer solar system. An OU model used computer simulations to show how planet accretion (growth) is halted by the outer solar system instability. Without it, Mars possibly could have become a larger, habitable planet like Earth.

“This study offers a simple and more elegant solution for why Mar...

Rutgers University-New Brunswick Professor Dennis Kent with part of a 1,700-foot-long rock core through the Chinle Formation in Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona. The background includes boxed archives of cores from the Newark basin that were compared with the Arizona core. Credit: Nick Romanenko/Rutgers University-New Brunswick

Gravity of Jupiter and Venus elongates Earth’s orbit every 405,000 years, Rutgers-led study confirms. Every 405,000 years, gravitational tugs from Jupiter and Venus slightly elongate Earth’s orbit, an amazingly consistent pattern that has influenced our planet’s climate for at least 215 million years and allows scientists to more precisely date geological events like the spread of dinosaurs, according to a Rutgers-led study.

The findings are published onlin...

WASP-18b is a ‘hot Jupiter’ located 325 light-years from Earth. Credit: NASA/GSFC

An international team of astronomers, led by Dr Nikolay Nikolov from the University of Exeter, have found that the atmosphere of the ‘hot Saturn’ WASP-96b is cloud-free. Using Europe’s 8.2m Very Large Telescope in Chile, the team studied the atmosphere of WASP-96b when the planet passed in front of its host-star. This enabled the team to measure the decrease of starlight caused by the planet and its atmosphere, and thereby determine the planet’s atmospheric composition.

Just like an individual’s fingerprints are unique, atoms and molecules have a unique spectral characteristic that can be used to detect their presence in celestial objects...