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Categories: Geoscience: Volcanoes, Space: The Solar System

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After decades of uncertainty, researchers have confirmed the existence of lunar carbon dioxide cold traps that could potentially contain solid carbon dioxide. The discovery will likely have a major influence in shaping future lunar missions and could impact the feasibility of a sustained robot or human presence on the moon.

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Near-Earth asteroid Kamo`oalewa could be a fragment of our moon.

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They're born. They live once, erupting for a period that might last for days, years or decades. Then, they go dark and die. This narrative describes the life of a monogenetic volcano, a type of volcanic hazard that can pose important dangers despite an ephemeral existence. The landscape of the southwestern U.S. is heavily scarred by past eruptions of such volcanoes, and a new study marks a step toward understanding future risks for the region.

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It is estimated that about 5-10 volcanoes worldwide are capable of producing a super-eruption that could catastrophically affect global climate. One of these volcanoes hides below the waters of Lake Toba in Sumatra and has caused two super-eruptions in the last one million years. But when will the next one be? Will there be any warning signs? To answer these questions, an international team of geologists developed an analysis of the levels of uranium and lead in zircons -- a mineral typically found in explosive volcanic eruptions -- to determine how long it took the volcano to prepare for its super-eruptions.

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A new study of data captured in orbit around Jupiter has revealed new insights into what's happening deep beneath the gas giant's distinctive and colorful bands.

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The Earth's atmosphere has been used as a 'laboratory' to carry out a physics experiment which could help to improve the performance of GPS.

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By combining Hubble Space Telescope observations with theoretical models, a team of astronomers has gained insights into the chemical and physical makeup of a variety of exoplanets known as hot Jupiters. The findings provide a new and improved 'field guide' for this group of planets and inform ideas about planet formation in general.

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With future space exploration in mind, a team of astronomers has published the final maps of Titan's liquid methane rivers and tributaries -- as seen by NASA's late Cassini mission -- so that may help provide context for Dragonfly's upcoming 2030s expedition.

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NASA's Lucy mission, the agency's first to Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Over the next 12 years, Lucy will fly by one main-belt asteroid and seven Trojan asteroids, making it the agency's first single spacecraft mission in history to explore so many different asteroids. Lucy will investigate these 'fossils' of planetary formation up close during its journey.

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Not all ice is the same. The solid form of water comes in more than a dozen different - sometimes more, sometimes less crystalline - structures, depending on the conditions of pressure and temperature in the environment. Superionic ice is a special crystalline form, half solid, half liquid - and electrically conductive. Its existence has been predicted on the basis of various models and has already been observed on several occasions under - very extreme - laboratory conditions. New results provide another piece of the puzzle in the spectrum of the manifestations of water. And they may also help to explain the unusual magnetic fields of the planets Uranus and Neptune, which contain a lot of water.

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Astrophysicists have investigated the past of Venus to find out whether Earth's sister planet once had oceans.

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A new article proposes that space probes could hitch a ride with 'centaurs' as they become comets. Along the way, the spacecraft would gather data that would otherwise be impossible to record -- including how comets, Earth-like planets, and even the solar system formed.

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One of the best chances for proving beyond-the-standard-model physics relies on something called the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix. The standard model insists that the CKM matrix, which describes the mixing of quarks, should be unitary. But growing evidence suggests that during certain forms of radioactive decay, the unitarity of the CKM matrix might break.

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The more water is dissolved in the magma, the greater the risk that a volcano will explode. A new study now shows that this simple rule is only partially true. Paradoxically, high water content significantly reduces the risk of explosion.

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Using the world's most powerful radio antenna, scientists have discovered stars unexpectedly blasting out radio waves, possibly indicating the existence of hidden planets.

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A lunar probe launched by the Chinese space agency recently brought back the first fresh samples of rock and debris from the moon in more than 40 years. Now an international team of scientists has determined the age of these moon rocks at close to 1.97 billion years old.

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When Pluto passed in front of a star on the night of August 15, 2018, astronomers deployed telescopes at numerous sites in the U.S. and Mexico to observe Pluto's atmosphere as it was briefly backlit by the well-placed star. Scientists used this occultation event to measure the overall abundance of Pluto's tenuous atmosphere and found compelling evidence that it is beginning to disappear, refreezing back onto its surface as it moves farther away from the Sun.

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A new study finds that next-generation telescopes used to see exoplanets could confuse Earth-like planets with other types of planets in the same solar system.

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Using machine learning and simulations of giant impacts, researchers found that the planets residing in the inner solar system were likely born from repeated hit-and-run collisions, challenging conventional models of planet formation.

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Analyzing observations of an X-ray flare and fitting the data with theoretical models, astronomers documented a fatal encounter between an unlucky star and a black hole.