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…
Mysterious dust ring beyond Jupiter formed many of our Solar System’s earliest worlds
In the young Solar System, a dust trap beyond Jupiter may have built wildly different meteorite parent bodies…
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…
Icy Volatile Enhancements in Evolving Protoplanetary Disks
Outer disk regions become increasingly H2O ice poor as compared to dominating N2, CO, and CO2 ices over…
Earth’s Building Blocks Came from Close to Home, Planetary Scientists Say
A new analysis of isotopic signatures across planets and meteorite parent bodies suggests our home world formed entirely…
Two Protoplanets Emerge from Dusty Disk around Nearby Young Star
Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and VLT Interferometer (VLTI) in Chile, astronomers have directly observed two gas…
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…
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…