All articles tagged with #solar system
New research suggests Earth could dodge engulfment by the Sun’s red-giant stage if the Sun loses mass quickly enough, causing Earth to drift to a wider orbit around a future white-dwarf Sun; however, life would still be impossible due to increased brightness and heat long before that final phase, with Mercury and Venus assuredly doomed and Mars potentially surviving in a wider orbit.
NASA’s Lucy mission found that the main-belt asteroid Donaldjohanson is a bilobed, peanut-shaped body with a complex tumbling rotation gradually altered by sunlight (the YORP effect). Close flyby data revealed iron-rich clays that formed in the presence of liquid water, suggesting water briefly existed on its parent body long ago. At about 155 million years old, Donaldjohanson is younger than Bennu and Ryugu and has stayed in the main belt, offering a contrast as Lucy heads toward studying Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, starting with Eurybates in 2027.
New models argue a substantial portion of solar-system water—roughly 30–50%—was inherited from pre-solar interstellar ice, not formed in the early solar disk; the deuterium enrichment seen in solar-system water is hard to explain with disk chemistry alone, suggesting some water in Earth’s oceans and comets predates the Sun by billions of years and carries ancient interstellar heritage.
A new preprint by Daniele Fargion proposes that flybys of planetary-mass objects in the outer Solar System could generate strong tides, volcanism, and climate upheavals on Earth, contributing to past mass extinctions beyond the Chicxulub event. The idea emphasizes tidal effects from near-passages (not direct collisions) and links several geological anomalies to such events; the hypothesis is controversial and based on correlations in the geological record. The paper, presented in 2025 and available on arXiv, underscores the possibility that distant, massive objects occasionally influence Earth’s history.
Astronomers analyzing the interstellar comet suggest it formed long before the Sun, likely in another star system before being ejected into interstellar space, implying its material is much older than the Solar System and offering clues about planetary formation elsewhere.
Researchers say a rare Sahara meteorite may originate from a lost planet that was destroyed in the early days of the solar system, potentially offering new clues about planet formation and the young solar system's history.
A new study based on 122 simulations suggests the early outer solar system may have hosted two additional ice-giant planets with masses between Earth and Neptune that were later ejected. Depending on whether the system started with five or six giants, Jupiter’s moons remained stable in the presence of two extra ice giants, while Uranus’s moons stayed stable with only one extra; Miranda’s ice content hints at past moon collisions. The findings imply a far bardziej crowded infancy for the solar system than previously thought, and the team notes further simulations are needed to pin down the exact number and masses of the missing planets. The work was published online in Icarus (2026).
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is gearing up to begin the decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), which will repeatedly image the southern sky with a 3.2‑gigapixel camera to detect small, fast‑moving solar-system bodies. Simulations predict the survey could add roughly 5 million new main-belt asteroids, about 40,000 trans‑Neptunian objects, and over 10,000 comets, with near-Earth objects more than tripling, though these are model yields, not guaranteed discoveries. Data Preview 2 is planned for July–September 2026 ahead of the formal survey start, enabling early testing of the predicted yields. The project will boost planetary defense and solar-system science but will not replace targeted follow-up observations for composition and dynamics.
Simulations suggest a dust-trap region just outside Jupiter served as a long-running nursery for planetesimals, creating two distinct populations of rocky building blocks and likely acting as a major birthplace for the solar system’s planets.
A new study used 122 simulations of the early outer solar system, varying how many giant planets there were. They find that a fifth, long‑lost ice giant could explain the current layout and that Jupiter’s moons survived in less than 15% of scenarios and Uranus’s moons in about 9%, with the surviving cases requiring the presence (and eventual ejection) of the extra planet. The result suggests our solar system’s history involved a stochastic instability that included a vanished planet reshaping the orbits of moons around the gas/ice giants.
NASA’s Voyager 1 is set to reach exactly one light-day from Earth in November 2026, about 25.9 billion kilometers away, continuing to send science data despite aging power and limited instruments. It has already crossed the termination shock and heliopause into the interstellar medium, but remains far from the Solar System’s edge; by around 2036 it could become undetectable, after which it will drift through the Milky Way for eons as a relic of humanity’s first grand interstellar-leaning probes.
In 1990, after Carl Sagan urged it, Voyager 1 photographed Earth from about 6 billion kilometers away, capturing a sub-pixel Pale Blue Dot; though scientifically minimal, the image gained iconic status through Sagan’s writing and a 2020 processing update, and with Voyager’s cameras long since turned off, it stands as the mission’s last full-family portrait of the solar system.
Scientists analyzing microscopic presolar dust grains trapped in Antarctic ice say these grains predate the sun and carry isotopic fingerprints from ancient stars. Studying them could illuminate the materials and processes present at the birth of the solar system, helping researchers understand how dust coagulated into planets and how interstellar material was delivered to early Earth.
New Antarctic ice analyses show trace iron-60, a signature of stellar explosions, was delivered to Earth as the solar system moves through the Local Interstellar Cloud. The measured iron-60 levels are lower than some predictions, but the dating (about 40,000–80,000 years ago) aligns with recent estimates that our solar system has been passing through the cloud within roughly 40,000–124,000 years, meaning Antarctica preserves a geological record of this interstellar journey.
Astronomers say comet C/2025 R3 PANSTARRS — a long-period visitor likely from the Oort Cloud — has been visible in the northern hemisphere for weeks, offering a rare glimpse at material from the solar system's birth. With such comets taking extremely elongated orbits, this one may not return for around 170,000 years, making its current pass a unique opportunity to study early solar-system building blocks and clues about how planets formed, as gravitational interactions could eventually eject it from the system.