Category Astronomy/Space

Mars may have been enveloped in a thick, steamy atmosphere as the planet’s crust cooled and solidified. That steam bath could have created many of the clay mineral deposits that have long been attributed to water flow on or just beneath the surface. Credit: Courtesy of Kevin Cannon

Planetary scientists from Brown University have proposed a new scenario for the formation of ancient clay minerals on Mars that, if shown to be true, could rewrite the early history of the red planet. There are thousands of ancient phyllosilicate outcrops on the Martian surface...

Artist impression of a pair of galaxies from the very early universe. Credit: NRAO/AUI/NSF; D. Berry

New observations push back the epoch of massive-galaxy formation even further by identifying two giant galaxies seen when the universe was only 780 million years old, or about 5% its current age. Astronomers expect that the first galaxies, those that formed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, would share many similarities with some of the dwarf galaxies we see in the nearby universe today. These early agglomerations of a few billion stars would then become the building blocks of the larger galaxies that came to dominate the universe after the first few billion years.

Ongoing observations with ALMA however, have discovered surprising examples of massive, star-filled galaxies...

Previous studies had hinted that something like subduction may have been happening on Jupiter’s moon, Europa. A new study provides geophysical evidence that it could indeed be happening on the moon’s icy shell. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute

Jupiter’s moon Europa could have subduction zones, a new study shows, which could supply chemical food for life to a subsurface ocean. A Brown University study provides new evidence that the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa may have plate tectonics similar to those on Earth. The study uses computer modeling to show that subduction – when a tectonic plate slides underneath another and sinks deep into a planet’s interior – is physically possible in Europa’s ice shell...

New research from The University of Texas at Austin adds new evidence to a theory that claims the metallic cores of rocky planets like Earth were formed when molten metal trapped between grains of silicate rock percolated to the center of the planet during its early formation. UT Austin.

Scientists have long pondered how rocky bodies in the solar system – including our own Earth – got their metal cores. According to research conducted by The University of Texas at Austin, evidence points to the downwards percolation of molten metal toward the center of the planet through tiny channels between grains of rock.

The finding calls into question the interpretation of prior experiments and simulations that sought to understand how metals behave under intense heat and pressure when planets are for...