Tag: planet formation
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How to find newborn planets without seeing them
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] And if I can be shameless: Forbes pays according to traffic, so the more of you who click on the link below and read my stuff, the better they…
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Strange asteroid may have been born in another star system
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] And if I can be shameless: Forbes pays according to traffic, so the more of you who share and visit and read my stuff, the better they pay me.…
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Some planet-like Kuiper belt objects don’t play “Nice”
When we talk about big advances in planetary science, we often are thinking about Mars rovers or the discovery of exoplanets. However, one area where we’ve learned a lot over the last few decades is the Kuiper belt: a region beyond the orbit of Neptune inhabited by small bodies of ice and rock. Before 1992,…
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Analysis of atmosphere reveals: weird exoplanet is weird
Imagine a planet 7 times the mass of Jupiter, hot enough to glow slightly, and containing dusty clouds of carbon monoxide and water. That planet is HR 8799c, one of the few worlds outside our Solar System which astronomers have been able to image directly. Part of the reason for its weirdness is its youth:…
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Kaboom! A simulation shows how impacts shaped and nearly destroyed Vesta
Vesta is the second-largest asteroid in the Solar System, and recent measurements by the Dawn mission showed that it’s actually a protoplanet: a piece of planet-like material left over from the early days of our Solar System. However, Dawn is significantly non-spherical and very battered. Most notably, it has two huge overlapping craters near its…
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