For planets, one thing leads to another
One of the biggest benefits of being a journalist is that you become aware of interesting things from various fields. As a science journalist, the ambit is narrowed but the interestingness, not at all…
Solar System
7 posts
A thicker crust on Vesta questions how it was baked
Billing its mission as a journey to the beginning of the Solar System, the NASA Dawn probe has revealed more information about the asteroid Vesta that has scientists both eager and cautious about what…
Studying our primal horizons at the Kuiper belt
In August this year, the New Horizons spacecraft will cross into the region of space beyond Neptune's orbit. It won't be the first human object to go this far: the two Voyager space probes hav…
Rocky exoplanets only get so big before they get gassy
By the time the NASA Kepler mission failed in 2013, it had gathered evidence that there were at least 962 exoplanets in 76 stellar systems, not to mention the final word is awaited on 2,900 more. In t…
The secrets of how planets form
Astronomers who were measuring the length of one day on an exoplanet for the first time were in for a surprise: it was shorter than any planet's in the Solar System. Beta Pictoris b, orbiting the…
O Voyager, where art thou?
On September 5, 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 1 space probe to study the Jovian planets Jupiter and Saturn, and their moons, and the interstellar medium, the gigantic chasm between various star-syst…
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On September 5, 1977, NASA launched the Voyager 1 space probe to study the Jovian planets Jupiter and Saturn, and their moons, and the interstellar medium, the gigantic chasm between various star-syst…