Planet News Archives

June 8, 2024June 8, 2024 by Allen Versfeld

Where Did Venus's Water Go?

HCO+ molecules reacting in the atmosphere of Venus. Credit: Aurore Simonnet/LASP/CU Boulder — In Venus' upper atmosphere, hydrogen atoms, orange, whiz into space, leaving behind carbon monoxide molecules, blue and purple. (Credit: Aurore Simonnet/LASP/CU Boulder)

It should not be surprising that Venus is dry. It is famous for its hellish conditions, with dense sulphurous clouds, rains of acid, atmospheric pressures comparable to a 900 meter deep lake, and a surface temperature high enough to melt lead. But it’s lack of water is not just a lack of rain and oceans: there’s no ice or water vapour either. Like Earth, Venus is found within our Solar System’s goldilocks zone, so it would have had plenty of water when it was first formed. So where did all of Venus’s water go?

January 19, 2024January 19, 2024 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Diamond Rain on Ice Giants Could Influence Their Magnetic Fields

Scientists created a model to explain how diamond rain falls inside Uranus and Neptune and messes with their magnetic fields. Courtesy SLAC.

Imagine Jupiter with a diamond core the size of Earth. That’s what science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke described in his novel (and movie) 2010: Odyssey 2. Now, imagine the same thing, but at Uranus and Neptune. In addition to a possible diamond core, diamond rain fills the interior. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory think they know how these diamonds form on ice-giant planets.

October 4, 2023October 4, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Hundreds of Free-Floating Planets Found in the Orion Nebula

This image shows the full survey of the inner Orion Nebula and Trapezium Cluster made using the NIRCam instrument on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. This is the long-wavelength colour composite, which focuses on the gas, dust, and molecules in the region with unprecedented sensitivity in the thermal infrared. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA / Science leads and image processing: M. McCaughrean, S. Pearson.

It appears that rogue planets – free floating worlds that aren’t gravitationally bound to a parent star – might be more common than we thought. New data from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed 540 (yes, that’s right) planetary-mass objects in the Orion Nebula and Trapezium Cluster.

If confirmed, this would be by far the largest sample of rogue planets ever discovered.

May 24, 2023May 24, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

There's a Polar Cyclone on Uranus' North Pole

NASA scientists used microwave observations to spot the first polar cyclone on Uranus, seen here as a light-colored dot to the right of center in each image of the planet. The images use wavelength bands K, Ka, and Q, from left. To highlight cyclone features, a different color map was used for each. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/VLA.

Uranus takes 84 years to orbit the Sun, and so that last time that planet’s north polar region was pointed at Earth, radio telescope technology was in its infancy.

But now, scientists have been using radio telescopes like the Very Large Array (VLA) the past few years as Uranus has slowly revealing more and more of its north pole. VLA microwave observations from 2021 and 2022 show a giant cyclone swirling around this region, with a bright, compact spot centered at Uranus’ pole. Data also reveals patterns in temperature, zonal wind speed and trace gas variations consistent with a polar cyclone.

February 7, 2023February 7, 2023 by Evan Gough

This Exoplanet Orbits Around its Star’s Poles

Astronomers have found another hot Jupiter in a polar orbit around its star. This illustration shows the exoplanet WASP-79 b following a polar orbit around its star. Image Credit: NASA/GSFC

In 1992, humanity’s effort to understand the Universe took a significant step forward. That’s when astronomers discovered the first exoplanets. They’re named Poltergeist (Noisy Ghost) and Phobetor (Frightener), and they orbit a pulsar about 2300 light-years away.

Even though we thought there must be other planets around other stars, and entire science fiction franchises were built on the idea, we didn’t know for sure and couldn’t just assume it to be true. A quick glance at human history shows how wrong our assumptions about nature can be.

June 13, 2022June 13, 2022 by Evan Gough

The Rapid Changes We’re Seeing With the Earth’s Magnetic Field Don’t Mean the Poles are About to Flip. This is Normal

An illustration of Earth's magnetic field. Image Credit: ESA/ATG medialab

One of the most interesting discoveries about Earth in the past few decades concerns the Earth’s magnetic poles. Paleomagnetic records show that the poles have flipped places 183 times in the last 83 million years. That’s about every 450,000 years on average, though there were ten million years between flips in at least two cases.

The Earth’s magnetic field is experiencing some rapid changes right now, but scientists say that has no relation to pole flipping.

October 1, 2020October 1, 2020 by Evan Gough

A Rogue Earth-Mass Planet Has Been Discovered Freely Floating in the Milky Way Without a Star

An artist's impression of a rogue planet. Image Credit: By Interpott.nrw - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83123717

If a solar system is a family, then some planets leave home early. Whether they want to or not. Once they’ve left the gravitational embrace of their family, they’re pretty much destined to drift through interstellar space forever, unbound to any star.

Astronomers like to call these drifters “rogue planets,” and they’re getting better at finding them. A team of astronomers have found one of these drifting rogues that’s about the same mass as Mars or Earth.

September 14, 2020September 14, 2020 by Evan Gough

Did Scientists Just Find Signs of Life on Venus?

This artistic impression depicts Venus. Astronomers at MIT, Cardiff University, and elsewhere may have observed signs of life in the atmosphere of Venus. Credits:Image: ESO (European Space Organization)/M. Kornmesser & NASA/JPL/Caltech

A team of scientists has just published a paper announcing their discovery of a peculiar chemical in the cloudtops of Venus. As far as scientists can tell, this chemical, called phosphine, could only be produced by living processes on a planet like Venus. So the whole internet is jumping on this story.

But did they find signs of life? Or is there another explanation?

August 5, 2020August 5, 2020 by Evan Gough

There’s One Cloud on Mars That’s Over 1800 km Long

A mysteriously long, thin cloud has again appeared over the 20-km high Arsia Mons volcano on Mars. Image Credit: ESA/GCP/UPV/EHU Bilbao

Mars’ massive cloud is back.

Every year during Mars’ summer solstice, a cloud of water ice forms on the leeward side of Arsia Mons, one of Mars’ largest extinct volcanoes. The cloud can grow to be up to 1800 km (1120 miles) long. It forms each morning, then disappears the same day, only to reappear the next morning. Researchers have named it the Arsia Mons Elongated Cloud (AMEC).

June 24, 2020June 24, 2020 by Evan Gough

Amazing View of How Dust Storms Grow on Mars

Two snapshots, about two weeks apart, of a 3D simulation of the 2018 Global Dust Storm performed with the NASA Ames Mars Global Climate Model. The storm began as a regional storm in Acidalia then moved eastward, triggering more dust lifting along the way (in Arabia, Sabaea, Hellas etc.). As the storm grew larger and became global, intense dust lifting events occurred in the Tharsis region, injecting dust at high altitudes. Credit: Tanguy Bertrand / Alex Kling / NASA Ames Research Center

In 2018, Mars experienced one of its global dust storms, a phenomenon seen nowhere else. As science would have it, there were no fewer than six spacecraft in orbit around Mars at the time, and two surface rovers. This was an unprecedented opportunity to watch and study the storm.