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Categories: Mathematics: Statistics, Space: The Solar System

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When the sun hurls a billion tons of high-energy particles and magnetic fields into space at speeds of more than a million miles per hour and the 'space weather' conditions are right, the resulting geomagnetic storm at Earth can wreak havoc on communication and navigation systems, electrical power grids, and pose radiation hazards to astronauts and airline passengers and crew.

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Compared to its celestial neighbors Venus and Mars, Earth is a pretty habitable place. So how did we get so lucky? A new study sheds light on the improbable evolutionary path that enabled Earth to sustain life.

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Back in 1930, it was an easy answer -- Pluto was a planet because we couldn't see anything else brighter at a similar distance away from us, says a cosmologist. Then, in the 1990s, astronomers began detecting more and more planet-like objects around Pluto and the questions started -- was Pluto a planet or not?

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Two of NASA's heliophysics missions can now claim planetary science on their list of scientific findings. A group of scientists used the Venus transit -- a very rare event where a planet passes between Earth and the sun, appearing to us as a dark dot steadily making its way across the sun's bright face -- to make measurements of how the Venusian atmosphere absorbs different kinds of light.

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Almost 2000 exoplanets have been discovered to date, ranging from rocky Earth-like planets to hot-Jupiters, and orbiting every type of star. But how many of these distant worlds are habitable? Today’s technology means that we currently have very little information about what exoplanets are like beyond their presence, size and distance from star. With the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope we may have our first glimpses into atmospheres of Earth-like exoplanets.

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The interiors of several of our Solar System's planets and moons are icy, and ice has been found on distant extrasolar planets, as well. This ice must exist under extreme pressures and high-temperatures, and potentially contains salty impurities, too. New research focuses on the physics underlying the formation of the types of ice that are stable under these paradoxical-seeming conditions. It could challenge current ideas about the physical properties found inside icy planetary bodies.

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If planets had personalities, Mars would be a rock star according to recent preliminary results from NASA's MAVEN spacecraft. Mars sports a 'Mohawk' of escaping atmospheric particles at its poles, 'wears' a layer of metal particles high in its atmosphere, and lights up with aurora after being smacked by solar storms. MAVEN is also mapping out the escaping atmospheric particles.

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Researchers combing through the data from the Venus Express mission have found new evidence of active lava flows on Earth's nearest neighbor.

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Large magnetic storms from the Sun, which affect technologies such as GPS and utility grids, could soon be predicted more than 24 hours in advance.

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Astronomers have identified a young planetary system which may aid in understanding how our own solar system formed and developed billions of years ago. 

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New data from MESSENGER, the spacecraft that orbited Mercury for four years before crashing into the planet a week ago, reveals Mercury's magnetic field is almost four billion years old.

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A NASA planetary exploration mission came to a planned, but nonetheless dramatic, end April 30 when it slammed into Mercury's surface at about 8,750 mph and created a new crater on the planet's surface.

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The discovery of a strange exoplanet orbiting very close to a small cool star 500 light years away is challenging ideas about how planets form.

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The MESSENGER spacecraft is the first ever to orbit the planet Mercury, and the spacecraft's seven scientific instruments and radio science investigation are unraveling the history and evolution of the solar system's innermost planet. MESSENGER's highly successful orbital mission is about to come to an end, as the spacecraft runs out of propellant and the force of solar gravity causes it to impact the surface of Mercury near the end of April 2015.

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Detecting an 'earthquake' on Venus would seem to be an impossible task. But conditions in Venus' atmosphere are much more hospitable, and it is here that researchers hope to deploy an array of balloons or satellites that could detect Venusian seismic activity -- using sound.

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While no one yet knows what's needed to build a habitable planet, it's clear that the interplay between the sun and Earth is crucial for making our planet livable -- a balance between a sun that provides energy and a planet that can protect itself from the harshest solar emissions.

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Scientists have long puzzled over the planet Mercury's excessively dark surface. New research suggests that carbon from passing comets could be the planet's mystery darkening agent.

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Scientists have found a warm layer in Venus' atmosphere, the nature of which is still unknown. The researchers made the discovery when compiling a temperature map of the upper atmosphere on the planet's night side based on the data collected by the Venus Express probe.

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New observations of the planet's extreme ultraviolet emissions show that bright explosions of Jupiter's aurora likely also get kicked off by the planet-moon interaction, not by solar activity.

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Jupiter may have swept through the early solar system like a wrecking ball, destroying a first generation of inner planets before retreating into its current orbit, according to a new study. The findings help explain why our solar system is so different from the hundreds of other planetary systems that astronomers have discovered in recent years.