In a study of the Earth’s mantle, scientists have identified two compositionally distinct continent-sized anomalies which could be traces of a protoplanet which impacted with Earth during its early formation.
According to the giant-impact hypothesis (also known as the Theia Impact), the moon was formed when a giant object such as a protoplanet crashed into the Earth when the solar system was still young.
In an article published in the latest issue of Science, Dr. Stuart Ryder from Macquarie University and Associate Professor Ryan Shannon from Swinburne University of Technology, leading a global team, have unveiled their groundbreaking discovery: the oldest and most distant fast radio burst ever detected, dating back approximately eight billion years.
Near the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy sits an immense “supermassive” black hole that astronomers call Sagittarius A*. Scientists theorise that the black hole grew in tandem with our galaxy, and suspect that similar phenomena are at the heart of most large galaxies in the universe.
JunoCam images presented by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran include an animation showing the evolution of swirling features in the giant planet’s atmosphere and a composite image of Jupiter’s cloud tops.
About 200 to 400 million years after the Big Bang created the universe, the first stars began to appear. Ordinarily stars lying at such a great distance in space and time would be out of reach even for NASA's new James Webb Space Telescope, due for launch in 2020.
Up until about ten years ago, scientists thought they had a pretty good picture of how the moon and Earth came to co-exist. Then more precise measurements blew it all wide open, and scientists are still struggling to reconcile them.
A new explanation for the Moon's origin has it forming inside the Earth when our planet was a seething, spinning cloud of vaporized rock, called a synestia.
In popular culture, asteroids play the role of apocalyptic threat, get blamed for wiping out the dinosaurs - and offer an extraterrestrial source for mineral mining.
New research using data collected by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has revealed that a little-known exoplanet called K2-18b could well be a scaled-up version of Earth.
A Brown University study provides new evidence that the icy shell of Jupiter's moon Europa may have plate tectonics similar to those on Earth. The presence of plate tectonic activity could have important implications for the possibility of life in the ocean thought to exist beneath the moon's surface.
Researchers have pinpointed the date of what could be the oldest solar eclipse yet recorded. The event, which occurred on 30 October 1207 BC, is mentioned in the Bible, and could have consequences for the chronology of the ancient world.
Sun-like star Kronos shows signs of having ingested 15 Earth masses worth of rocky planets, prompting Princeton astronomers to name it after the Titan who ate his children.