Solar System Content

Aluminum Isotope in the Early Solar System

Andy Fell — September 05, 2023 - 11:02am

A little over four and a half billion years ago, dust circling our young sun was collecting into balls that would become planets. Heat from radioactive decay melted these balls of dust into blobs of molten rock, growing as they accumulated more material. A small piece of one of these molten objects broke away and traveled around the solar system for eons before falling to Earth as a meteorite in the Algerian desert. Now, very accurate dating of this meteorite is giving new insight into the formation of the Solar System.

Deep Mantle Krypton Reveals Earth’s Outer Solar System Ancestry

Andy Fell — December 15, 2021 - 10:00am

Krypton from the Earth’s mantle, collected from geologic hot spots in Iceland and the Galapagos Islands, reveals a clearer picture of how our planet formed, according to new research from the University of California, Davis.

Dwarf Planet Vesta a Window to the Early Solar System

Andy Fell — October 06, 2021 - 4:30pm

The dwarf planet Vesta is helping scientists better understand the earliest era in the formation of our solar system. Two recent papers involving scientists from the University of California, Davis, use data from meteorites derived from Vesta to resolve the “missing mantle problem” and push back our knowledge of the solar system to just a couple of million years after it began to form. The papers were published in Nature Communications Sept. 14 and Nature Astronomy Sept. 30.

Meteorites Show Transport of Material in Early Solar System

Andy Fell — September 08, 2020 - 3:05pm

New studies of a rare type of meteorite show that material from close to the sun reached the outer solar system even as the planet Jupiter cleared a gap in the disk of dust and gas from which the planets formed. The results, published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, add to an emerging understanding of how our solar system formed and how planets form around other stars.

Explaining the Tiger Stripes of Enceladus

Andy Fell — December 09, 2019 - 11:53am

Saturn’s tiny, frozen moon Enceladus is a strange place. Just 300 miles across, the moon is thought to have an outer shell of ice covering a global ocean 20 miles deep, encasing a rocky core. Slashed across Enceladus’ south pole are four straight, parallel fissures or “tiger stripes” from which water erupts. These fissures aren’t quite like anything else in the solar system.

Mantle Neon Illuminates Earth’s Formation

Andy Fell — December 05, 2018 - 11:19am

The Earth formed relatively quickly from the cloud of dust and gas around the sun, trapping water and gases in the planet’s mantle, according to research published Dec. 5 in the journal Nature. Apart from settling Earth’s origins, the work could help in identifying extrasolar systems that could support habitable planets.

How Did the Moon Get Where It Is?

Karen Michele Nikos — September 17, 2018 - 4:47pm

Earth’s moon is an unusual object in our solar system, and now there’s a new theory to explain how it got where it is, which puts some twists on the current “giant impact” theory.

How the Moon Formed Inside a Vaporized Earth Synestia

Andy Fell — February 28, 2018 - 1:49pm

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. The new model led by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and Harvard University resolves several problems in lunar formation and is published Feb. 28 in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets.

Synestia, a New Type of Planetary Object

Andy Fell — May 22, 2017 - 2:47pm

There’s something new to look for in the heavens, and it’s called a “synestia,” according to planetary scientists Simon Lock at Harvard University and Sarah Stewart at the University of California, Davis. A synestia, they propose, would be a huge, spinning, donut-shaped mass of hot, vaporized rock, formed as planet-sized objects smash into each other.

New Theory Explains How the Moon Got There

Andy Fell — October 31, 2016 - 11:36am

Earth’s moon is an unusual object in our solar system, and now there’s a new theory to explain how it got where it is, which puts some twists on the current “giant impact” theory. The work is published Oct. 31 in the journal Nature.