The Earth’s spin naturally drifts on its axis over time, and that’s generally chalked up to the way mass is distributed and redistributed across the planet’s surface. Now, NASA scientists studying data gathered across the entire 20th century have identified three broad processes that play a part.
Continue Reading
Pluto was demoted from planet status to dwarf planet in 2006. But a new study suggests it should be resurrected as a planet, since the definition the object failed to meet was not based on precedents set in scientific literature.
Continue Reading
Jupiter may be the largest planet in the solar system, but it experienced growing pains. That's the conclusion of a team of scientists, who say that Jupiter grew in three stages with a two-million-year gap during which it grew very slowly, affecting the development of the rest of the solar system.
Continue Reading
A brown dwarf was recently downgraded to planet status (albeit a huge one), and now astronomers have discovered that it generates an enormous magnetic field, which could provide a new tool in the search for exoplanets.
Continue Reading
By their nature, stars burn bright – so when they start dimming and fading, scientists pay attention. Now, astronomers have observed a strangely-twinkling star and found that it might be the result of a collision between proto-planets orbiting it, and the star gobbling up the remains.
Continue Reading
They might seem like boring rocks, but asteroids and meteorites have fascinating stories to tell about the history of the solar system. New research from the University of Florida has now traced back the origins of almost all asteroids in the inner belt to just five or six ancient minor planets.
Continue Reading
Astronomers have snapped the first confirmed image of a planet still in the process of forming. The newborn, named PDS 70b, was spotted by the ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) as a bright splotch in the cloud of dust surrounding a young star.
Continue Reading
According to the results of a new study, Uranus may have survived a dramatic collision with a protoplanet twice, or even three times the size of Earth roughly four billion years ago, back when the solar system was young.
Continue Reading
Evidence is growing for a ninth planet lurking on the edges of the Solar System. Objects out there move in ways that suggest an unseen world is pulling on them, but new calculations suggest that there is no Planet Nine – these distant objects might just be jostling each other like bumper cars.
Continue Reading
As leftovers from the formation of the solar system, meteorites can act as time capsules. Scientists at the EPFL have now examined a piece of an asteroid known as 2008 TC3 and found diamonds that could only have come from a large, long-lost planet that roamed our neighborhood billions of years ago.
Continue Reading
See the stories that matter in your inbox every morning