Planetary Formation
Are Black Holes Planet Smashers?
[/caption] Some supermassive black holes are obscured by oddly shaped dust clouds which resemble doughnuts. These clouds have been an…
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Russia Fuels Phobos-Grunt and sets Mars Launch for November 9
[/caption] Russia’s Space Agency, Roscosmos, has set November 9 as the launch date for the Phobos-Grunt mission to Mars and…
Herschel Observatory Detects ‘Oceans’ of Water Around Distant Star
[/caption] There’s enough water in a planet-forming disk around a distant star to fill several thousand Earth oceans, according to…
How Did Jupiter Shape Our Solar System?
[/caption] Jupiter hasn't always been in the same place in our solar system. Early in the history of our solar…
Cosmic Collisions Could Eject Habitable Planets
[/caption] When it comes to solar systems, chances are good that we're a lot more special than we thought. According…
Titan’s Giant Cloud Explained
[/caption] Titan is making news again, this time with Cassini images from 2010 showing a storm nearly as big as…
Genesis Sheds Light On Sun And Solar System Formation
[/caption] For 886 days between 2001 and 2004, a tiny spacecraft named Genesis sat parked at Lagrange Point L1 quietly…
The Flip Side of Exoplanet Orbits
[/caption] It was once thought that our planet was part of a "typical" solar system. Inner rocky worlds, outlying gas…
Meteorites Illuminate Mystery of Chromium in Earth’s Core
It’s generally assumed that the Earth’s overall composition is similar to that of chondritic meteorites, the primitive, undifferentiated building blocks…
First-Time Views of Solar System Births
[/caption] Chalk up a sizzling success for the HiCIAO planet-hunter camera on the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii: it's captured this unprecedented…