In 2013, researchers announced that a pebble found in south-west Egypt, was definitely not from Earth. By 2015, other research teams had announced that the 'Hypatia' stone was not part of any known types of meteorite or comet, ...
Space Exploration
Jan 9, 2018
3
158
The missing link in our understanding of planet formation has been revealed by the first ever spacecraft to orbit and land on a comet, say German scientists. The study is published in a recent edition of the journal Monthly ...
Space Exploration
Oct 25, 2017
7
319
The element carbon and its compounds form the basics for life on Earth. Short-duration flash-heating events in the solar nebula prior to the formation of planets in our solar system were responsible for supplying the Earth ...
Astronomy
Sep 29, 2017
4
102
About 4.6 billion years ago, an enormous cloud of hydrogen gas and dust collapsed under its own weight, eventually flattening into a disk called the solar nebula. Most of this interstellar material contracted at the disk's ...
Space Exploration
Feb 9, 2017
0
24
Detailed analysis of data collected by Rosetta show that comets are the ancient leftovers of early Solar System formation, and not younger fragments resulting from subsequent collisions between other, larger bodies.
Space Exploration
Jul 28, 2016
20
547
Astronomers estimate that at the time the Solar system formed, its proto-planetary disk contained the equivalent of about twenty Jupiter-masses of gas and dust. This so-called "minimum mass solar nebula (MMSN)" is derived ...
Astronomy
Oct 19, 2015
1
906
Dammit, science people! Why are you always firing probes "outwards"? Then they have to go past all this stuff, like planets and asteroids and crap to escape the solar system. Don't you realize that if we want to see what's ...
Space Exploration
Jul 10, 2015
1
35
NOAO scientists, using the Gemini Observatory 8-meter telescope in Chile, have obtained the highest resolution image ever obtained for the planetary nebula NGC 2346. Shaped like a butterfly, or an hourglass, but known scientifically ...
Astronomy
Jul 10, 2015
0
89
The solar system is old. Like, dial-up-fax-machine-old. 4.6 billion years to be specific. The solar system has nothing on the universe. It's been around for 13.8 billion years, give or take a few hundred million. That means ...
Astronomy
May 29, 2015
18
188
How did the Solar System's planets come to be? The leading theory is something known as the "protoplanet hypothesis", which essentially says that very small objects stuck to each other and grew bigger and bigger—big enough ...
Space Exploration
Jan 30, 2015
7
48
