Tag: Planetary Formation
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How Planets Get Wet: Water Creation During Planet Formation
Introduction: A Wet Start for Planets For years, scientists have wondered how rocky planets acquire their water—whether it is delivered after formation by comets and asteroids, or whether water can emerge in the early molten stages of planet building. Recent work published in Nature by researchers affiliated with Carnegie and other institutions suggests a compelling…
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Decoding Deuterium in Saturn’s Ice: JWST Reveals Uniform D/H in Moon Water
Overview: Probing the D/H Ratio in Saturn’s Moon Ice The deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) ratio in water ice is a key fingerprint of how water formed and evolved in the early solar system. In giant planet systems, the D/H value can preserve the history of solid materials—ices and pebbles—that coalesced into moons, and it can reflect the…
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Deuterated Water Ice on Saturn’s Satellites: Unveiling D/H Ratios
New JWST Detections Reveal Deuterium-Enriched Ice on Saturnian Moons The deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) ratio in water ice is a key tracer of how and where planetary bodies acquired their water. A recent study using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reports robust spectroscopic detections of the 4.14 μm O-D stretch absorption on mid-sized Saturnian satellites. This…
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Deuterated Water Ice on Saturn Satellites: JWST Reveals Uniform D/H Across Mid-Sized Moons
New JWST Spectroscopy Maps Water Deuteration on Saturn’s Moons In a groundbreaking study, astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) report robust detections of the 4.14 μm O-D stretch in water ice on the mid-sized satellites of Saturn. This spectral feature is analogous to the familiar 3 μm water O-H stretch and serves as…
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What’s Odd About the Moon’s Largest Crater—and Why Artemis Astronauts Are Headed There
Introduction: A Giant Crater That Holds Inside Secrets The Moon’s far side hosts the Solar System’s largest known impact basin: the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin. Spanning roughly 1,930 kilometers north-south and about 1,600 kilometers east-west, this ancient scar on the Moon’s crust formed around 4.3 billion years ago when a colossal asteroid struck the young…
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Water’s Ultraviolet Fingerprint Detected in Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS
Interstellar Ice Reaches Our Solar System For millions of years, a fragment of ice and dust wandered between the stars. This summer, that cosmic traveler—named 3I/ATLAS—made a rare entry into our solar system, becoming only the third confirmed interstellar comet. Its journey has already begun to reshape our understanding of how planetary materials form and…
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Ultraviolet fingerprint of water detected in interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS
Interstellar visitors and a long-awaited water signal For millions of years, a fragment of ice and dust drifted between the stars, a sealed bottle released into the cosmic ocean. This summer, that bottle washed ashore in our solar system as 3I/ATLAS, only the third known interstellar comet. In a landmark observation, Auburn University scientists used…
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How to Discover a Planet: From 51 Pegasi b to Exoplanets
Introduction: The moment that changed our view of the cosmos On October 6, 1995, at a scientific meeting in Florence, Italy, two Swiss astronomers announced a finding that would forever alter our understanding of the universe: a planet orbiting a star other than the Sun. Michel Mayor and his Ph.D. student Didier Queloz, working at…
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Astronomers Point to Hidden Planet Y Beyond Neptune
Unseen Influences in the Outer Solar System For decades, scientists have wondered whether the outer solar system harbors a hidden planet. The latest clue comes from a careful survey of distant icy bodies beyond Neptune. Researchers analyzed roughly 50 Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs) and found orbital tilts that don’t align with current models of planetary…
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Architecture Of Planetary Systems With And Without Outer Giant Planets: ILP Detections Around HD 23079, HD 196067, and HD 86226
Introduction: Unraveling the Link Between Outer Giant Planets and Inner Light Planets Understanding whether outer giant planets (OGPs) shape the formation and arrangement of inner light planets (ILPs) is central to planetary-system theory. The debate spans theoretical expectations—some models predict a positive correlation between OGPs and ILPs, while others anticipate an anticorrelation due to dynamical…