Comets/Asteroids

Model for the Earth's core: Heidelberg researchers verify presence of solar noble gases in metal of an iron meteorite High-precision noble gas analyses indicate that solar wind particles from our primordial Sun were encased in the Earth's…

New observations reveal that Mars could still be volcanically active, raising the possibility for habitable conditions below the surface of Mars in recent historyCredit: NASA/JPL/MSSS/The Murray Lab Evidence of recent volcanic…

Credit: I. Saviane/ESO Part of the world-wide effort to scan and identify near-Earth objects, the European Space Agency's Test-Bed Telescope 2 (TBT2), a technology demonstrator hosted at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile, has now…

An international team of researchers searched for pieces of a small asteroid tracked in space and then observed to impact Botswana on June 2, 2018.Credit: SETI Institute April 23, 2021, Mountain View, CA -- An international…

Credit: Sagiv Shiber, LSU A breakthrough astrophysics code, named Octo-Tiger, simulates the evolution of self-gravitating and rotating systems of arbitrary geometry using adaptive mesh refinement and a new method to parallelize the code to…

Scientists detect small pockets of carbon dioxide-rich liquid water in a meteorite dating from the early solar systemCredit: Dr. Akira Tsuchiyama from Ritsumeikan University Water is abundant in our solar system. Even outside of our…

Credit: Photo by NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Laboratory/Guillermo Stenborg and Brendan Gallagher WASHINGTON - U.S. Naval Research Laboratory scientists were recently left scratching their heads over a familiar sight in…

Credit: © Cécile Engrand/Jean Duprat Every year, our planet encounters dust from comets and asteroids. These interplanetary dust particles pass through our atmosphere and give rise to shooting stars. Some of them reach the ground…

Research team led by the University of Göttingen discovers crater floor sagging from bowl-shaped volcanic ash layerCredit: Gernot Arp, University of Goettingen The almost 15-million-year-old Nördlinger Ries is an asteroid impact crater…

Credit: Kyoto Sangyo University The world's first ground-based observations of the bare nucleus of a comet nearing the end of its active life revealed that the nucleus has a diameter of 800 meters and is covered with large grains of…

Credit: Credits: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission is on the brink of discovering the extent of the mess it made on asteroid Bennu's surface during last fall's sample collection event. On Apr. 7, the…

Research led by the University of Kent's School of Physical Sciences has found new evidence of a low-altitude meteoritic touchdown event reaching the Antarctic ice sheet 430,000 years ago A research team of international space scientists,…

Credit: ESO/O. Hainaut New observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) indicate that the rogue comet 2I/Borisov, which is only the second and most recently detected interstellar visitor to…

Radio observations of a cold, dense cloud of molecular gas reveal more than a dozen unexpected moleculesCredit: M. Weiss / Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian Cambridge, MA (March 18, 2021)--Scientists have discovered a…

Credit: Lucy Entwisle Lightning strikes were just as important as meteorites in creating the perfect conditions for life to emerge on Earth, geologists say. Minerals delivered to Earth in meteorites more than 4 billion…

Photon origins tracked to Cygnus OB2 star-forming regionCredit: TeV: Binita Hona (HAWC Collaboration), IR: Hora et. al, Spitzer's Growing Legacy, ASP Conference Series, 2010, P. Ogle, ed. LOS ALAMOS, N.M., March 11, 2021--A…

Unique technique may help planetary defense prepare for asteroids on a collision course with EarthCredit: Credit: Arecibo Observatory/Israel Cabrera Using the same principles that make polarized sunglasses possible, a team of…

Credit: Credit: NASA/SOFIA/ Lynette Cook. In early 2016, an icy visitor from the edge of our solar system hurtled past Earth. It briefly became visible to stargazers as Comet Catalina before it slingshotted past the Sun to…

Team explored the relationships between the strength of the magnetic field on planet's surface and the composition of the crust in the Terra Sirenum-Terra Cimmeria region The planet Mars has no global magnetic field, although scientists…

Tyler Robinson recognized for academic leadership, research quality and innovationCredit: Northern Arizona University A Northern Arizona University astronomer who studies the atmospheres of solar system worlds, exoplanets and brown…