Before the first exoplanets were discovered in the 1990s, our own solar system served as the model for what solar systems looked like. The physical and chemical dynamics that formed our system were also seen as the default model for what might have occurred in solar systems yet to be found. As the number of …
New Insights Into How Earth Got Its Nitrogen
Scientists have long held that many of the important compounds and elements that make life possible on Earth arrived here after the planet was formed and was orbiting the sun. These molecules came via meteorites and comets, it was thought, from the colder regions beyond Jupiter. But in a challenge to that long-accepted view, a …
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Planets Still Forming Detected in a Protoplanetary Disk
Just as the number of planets discovered outside our solar system is large and growing -- more than 3,700 confirmed at last count -- so too is the number of ingenious ways to find exoplanets ever on the rise. The first exoplanets were found by measuring the "wobble" in their host stars caused by the …
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Many Worlds 