Rocky Planets May Have Started Forming Just 100 Million Years after Big Bang
New simulations suggest supernova explosions of the Universe’s first stars scattered the ingredients for rocky planets only 100…
Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Likely Originated in Outskirts of Ancient Planetary System
Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have measured carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios in 3I/ATLAS, the third…
Weighing Newborn Planets Using Their Dusty Fingerprints
Simulation of a planet embedded in a protoplanetary disc, causing disc material to pile up in a ring…
Constraints On The Crystallinity Of Water Ice In Planet-forming Disks From Infrared Scattered-Light Spectra
Protoplanetary disk images (top row) and scattered-/transmitted-light spectra (bottom-left and bottom-middle) obtained from the radiative-transfer simulations, together with…
Ancient impact with Theia may have brought water and life to Earth
Earth’s story may have hardened into place almost as soon as the Solar System began. That is the…
Webb Detects Hydrogen Sulfide Gas on Three Super-Jupiters
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have for the first time identified hydrogen sulfide gas in…
4.6 billion years ago, Jupiter saved Earth during its formation
When the solar system formed about 4.6 billion years ago, a gigantic cloud of dust and gas collapsed…
ALMA Detects Heavy Water in Planet-Forming Disk around Distant Protostar
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have detected doubly deuterated water (D2O), or ‘heavy water,’ in…
3I/ATLAS-Like Interstellar Objects Could Kick Start Planet Formation around High-Mass Stars
The discovery of 1I/Oumuamua, 2I/Borisov and 3I/ATLAS showed that significant numbers of interstellar objects populate interstellar space. Their…
Astronomers glimpse growth of baby planet shrouded in dust
Image from the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile showing the growth of baby planet AB Aurigae b…