solar system tagged posts

Outer reaches of solar system could harbor another planet–or evidence modifying laws of gravity. A pair of theoretical physicists are reporting that the same observations inspiring the hunt for a ninth planet might instead be evidence within the solar system of a modified law of gravity originally developed to understand the rotation of galaxies.

Researchers Harsh Mathur, a professor of physics at Case Western Reserve University, and Katherine Brown, an associate professor of physics at Hamilton College, made the assertion after studying the effect the Milky Way galaxy would have on objects in the outer solar syst...

Scientists have discovered a new ring system around a dwarf planet on the edge of the Solar System. The ring system orbits much further out than is typical for other ring systems, calling into question current theories of how ring systems are formed.

The ring system is around a dwarf planet, named Quaoar, which is approximately half the size of Pluto and orbits the Sun beyond Neptune.

The discovery, published in Nature, was made by an international team of astronomers using HiPERCAM — an extremely sensitive high-speed camera developed by scientists at the University of Sheffield which is mounted on the world’s largest optical telescope, the 10.4 metre diameter Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) on La Palma.

The rings are too small and faint to see directl...

Our solar system is estimated to be about 4.57 billion years old. Previous analyses of ancient meteorites have shown that minerals were created through chemical reactions with water as far back as 4.5 billion years ago. New findings from the Ryugu asteroid samples indicate that carbonates were forming from water-rock reactions several million years earlier, even closer to the solar system’s beginnings.

Mineral samples collected from the Ryugu asteroid by the Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft are helping UCLA space scientists and colleagues better understand the chemical composition of our solar system as it existed in its infancy, more than 4.5 billion years ago.

In research recently published in Nature Astronomy, scientists using isotopic ana...

With the help of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, and other ground-based telescopes, astronomers have confirmed that a faint object discovered in 2018 and nicknamed “Farfarout” is indeed the most distant object yet found in our Solar System. The object has just received its designation from the International Astronomical Union.

Farfarout was first spotted in January 2018 by the Subaru Tel...