A field test showed the capabilities and limitations of rover-based and helicopter-based missions, with rovers excelling at detailed analyses and helicopters taking the lead on mapping operations.
Modeling Pluto’s nitrogen loss through its “Wild Years,” otherwise known as the giant planet instability period, shows that the dwarf planet didn’t lose an excessive amount of volatiles during this time.
If the orbits of hot Jupiters can couple to a stellar gravity mode through resonance locking, it may explain the mystery of why the obliquity of these extreme exoplanets correlates with stellar temperature.
G. J. Cooke et al 2024 Planet. Sci. J. 5 168
It’s not enough to just be in the habitable zone: seemingly habitable exoplanets may be doomed to deadliness depending on the amount of oxygen in their atmospheres, as too much oxygen can produce lethal amounts of ozone.
Na’ama Hallakoun et al 2024 ApJL 970 L11
White dwarfs in binary systems with a main-sequence companion separated by roughly 1 au are less likely to be massive than single white dwarfs in the field, which may be due to a lack of mergers in this population.
How does a black hole’s rotation affect the motion of matter that gets close to the event horizon? New work explores the complicated structure of bound orbits and shows the fate of particles in this situation.