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Categories: Physics: Acoustics and Ultrasound, Space: The Solar System

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Scientists have discovered a new large valley on Mercury that may be the first evidence of buckling of the planet's outer silicate shell in response to global contraction. The researchers discovered the valley using a new high-resolution topographic map of part of Mercury's southern hemisphere created by stereo images from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft.

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A team of researchers has presented a new model for the origin of Saturn's rings based on results of computer simulations. The results of the simulations are also applicable to rings of other giant planets and explain the compositional differences between the rings of Saturn and Uranus.

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NASA's New Horizons mission reached a major milestone this week when the last bits of science data from the Pluto flyby -- stored on the spacecraft's digital recorders since July 2015 -- arrived safely on Earth.

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NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by Uranus 30 years ago, but researchers are still making discoveries from the data it gathered then. A new study led by University of Idaho researchers suggests there could be two tiny, previously undiscovered moonlets orbiting near two of the planet's rings.

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As the search for a hypothetical, unseen planet far, far beyond Neptune's orbit continues, new research provides additional support for the possible existence of such a world and narrows the range of its parameters and location.

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Planet Nine the undiscovered planet at the edge of the solar system appears to be responsible for the unusual tilt of the Sun, according to a new study.

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Stern said that Pluto's complex, layered atmosphere is hazy and appears to be mostly free of clouds, but the team has spied a handful of potential clouds in images taken with New Horizons' cameras. "If there are clouds, it would mean the weather on Pluto is even more complex than we imagined," Stern said.

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The European Space Agency's Venus Express mission has provided a great amount of data from the surface and atmosphere of Earth's inner twin planet. Among these observations was the mapping of the southern hemisphere of Venus in the near infrared spectral range. However the thick and permanent cloud cover of Venus limits the achievable resolution, similar to observing a scene through fog. Using a numerical model, planetary researchers pushed the limits of the data resolution.

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Planets that revolve around two suns may surprisingly survive the violent late stages of the stars' lives, according to new research. The finding is surprising because planets orbiting close to a single sun, like Mercury and Venus in our solar system, would be destroyed when the aging star swells into a red giant.

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A subsurface ocean lies deep within Saturn's moon Dione, according to new data from the Cassini mission to Saturn. Two other moons of Saturn, Titan and Enceladus, are already known to hide global oceans beneath their icy crusts, but a new study suggests an ocean exists on Dione as well.

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Ever since NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto last year, evidence has been mounting that the dwarf planet may have a liquid ocean beneath its icy shell. Now, by modeling the impact dynamics that created a massive crater on Pluto's surface, a team of researchers has made a new estimate of how thick that liquid layer might be.

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What is the origin of the large heart-shaped nitrogen glacier revealed in 2015 on Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft? Astronomers show that Pluto's peculiar insolation and atmosphere favor nitrogen condensation near the equator, in the lower altitude regions, leading to an accumulation of ice at the bottom of Sputnik Planum, a vast topographic basin. Through their simulations, they also explain the surface distribution and atmospheric abundance of other types of volatiles observed on Pluto.

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Scientists using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have made the first detections of X-rays from Pluto. These observations offer new insight into the space environment surrounding the largest and best-known object in the solar system's outermost regions.

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In June 2015, when the cameras on NASA's approaching New Horizons spacecraft first spotted the large reddish polar region on Pluto's largest moon, Charon, mission scientists knew two things: they'd never seen anything like it elsewhere in our solar system, and they couldn't wait to get the story behind it. Over the past year, the scientists think they've solved the mystery.

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Astronomers found signs of a growing planet around TW Hydra, a nearby young star, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Based on the distance from the central star and the distribution of tiny dust grains, the baby planet is thought to be an icy giant, similar to Uranus and Neptune in our Solar System. This result is another step towards understanding the origins of various types of planets.

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For the first time, scientists have directly mapped Earth's fluctuating magnetic field and resulting electrical currents to aurora, thanks to northern lights observations from NASA's THEMIS mission.

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Scientists have discovered that the depths of Uranus, Neptune and their satellites may contain extraordinary compounds, such as carbonic and orthocarbonic acids. It is no accident researchers have chosen these planets as a subject for their research. These gas giants consist mainly of hydrogen, carbon and oxygen, which are the three cornerstones of organic chemistry.

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Research suggests that virtually all of Earth's life-giving carbon could have come from a collision about 4.4 billion years ago between Earth and an embryonic planet similar to Mercury.

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The solar system could be thrown into disaster when the sun dies if the mysterious 'Planet Nine' exists, according to new research.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

In the race to discover a proposed ninth planet in our Solar System, researchers have observed several never-before-seen objects at extreme distances from the Sun in our Solar System.