planetary science
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Astronomers Spot Cataclysmic Collision of Giant Asteroids in Nearby Star System
Nearly 20 years ago, astronomers observed a massive cloud of fine dust particles around a young star located just 63 light-years away from Earth. In recent observations from the Webb Space Telescope, however, the dust cloud had mysteriously vanished. Now, a new paper suggests the dust cloud may have been caused by a violent event…
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What’s Up With STEVE? New Finding Adds a Twist to the Aurora-Like Enigma
STEVE, a strange ribbon of purple and green haze discovered by citizen scientists in 2016, just got even weirder. While looking through archival data, a team of scientists discovered that the aurora-like phenomenon has a secret twin moving in the opposite direction. A photo of STEVE’s long-lost sibling hanging out above the Norwegian Arctic was…
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Life Under Three Suns: The Real Physics Behind Netflix’s 3 Body Problem
By now, I’m assuming that we’ve made our way through all eight episodes of the Netflix adaptation of Liu Cixin’s The 3 Body Problem (and by we, I mean sci-fi nerds). The series is packed with science—much of it way over the top—but it grounds itself in quantum mechanics and astrophysics. The show combines hard…
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Saturn’s ‘Death Star’ Moon Is Hiding an Ocean Beneath Its Mangled Surface
An odd little moon that orbits closely to Saturn just revealed its biggest mystery: a hidden ocean that lies beneath its heavily cratered surface. Mimas is less than 123 miles (198 kilometers) wide, too small to be perfectly round, and its icy shell is covered with deep scarring from objects slamming into it. Its most…