Sentences with phrase «rocky bodies»

Instead, it is fundamental to understanding rocky bodies like the moon.

What I would desperately like to know is whether or not it has the small rocky bodies on the inside too.

All things considered I'd rather deal with the small rocky bodies heading towards earth.

One explanation for such a transition would be an orbital migration of the giant planets that disrupted the asteroid belt, sending a slew of rocky bodies flying toward Mars, Mercury, Venus, Earth and its moon early on.

In 2006, with the discovery of several other rocky bodies similar in size or larger than Pluto, the IAU decided to re-classify Pluto as a dwarf planet.

Scientists have long pondered how rocky bodies in the solar system — including our own Earth — got their metal cores.

«It will help us learn how rocky bodies form, including Earth, its moon and even planets in other solar systems.»

An infrared telescope has revealed fresh clouds of dust from gigantic smashups between rocky bodies, signs that planet - building and destruction take longer and are more violent than astronomers had assumed.

As impact glass is a ubiquitous substrate on rocky bodies throughout the Solar System and likely common on the early Earth, the preservation of biological activity in impact glass has significant astrobiological implications for life on early Earth as well as for the search for life on other planets.

The surface of Mercury is rather different from those of well - known rocky bodies like the Moon and Mars.

Recent collisions between comets and rocky bodies within the star system are thought to have generated the surplus of dust.

These «debris disks» are constantly fed by collisions among rocky bodies — the larger of which can survive and grow by continued accretion — because the tiny dust grains quickly fall onto the central star or get blown out of the planetary system.

The seeming abundance of rocky super-Earths lends support to the core accretion model of planet formation, in which small rocky bodies collide and clump together to grow into these objects.

With a diameter of about 1,215 km, the France - sized moon is one of largest known objects in the Kuiper Belt, the region of icy, rocky bodies beyond Neptune.

«I would say if you're finding rocky bodies, you're probably building them pretty much the same way everywhere,» Russell says.

The rest will coalesce into planets, asteroids, and comets — some of which will, as happened in our solar system billions of years ago, carry water and chemicals to rocky bodies lying within the star's habitable zone.

Even though many of the planets orbit their stars very closely and have high temperatures, which in turn causes their hydrogen - rich atmospheres to expand and a fraction of the gases to escape the planet over time, it's unlikely that the planets will lose enough of their atmosphere to become rocky bodies like Earth, the researchers report online today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Last year, rival European and U.S. teams used sensitive new measurements to discover three hot worlds roughly the size of Neptune (ScienceNOW, 31 August 2004:), which theorists regarded as plausible rocky bodies.

The find is reminiscent of the solar system's earliest days, when most large, rocky bodies sported a magma ocean until they cooled down.

Researchers haven't yet confirmed the idea, but further studies should produce new clues about the composition and behavior of these tiny rocky bodies — information that someday could help prevent a catastrophic collision with Earth.

Comets, those icy and rocky bodies with the spectacular long tails of gas and dust, are common in our Solar System, with several thousand having been discovered so far.

This material was removed from the surface of the massive rocky body, probably through large - scale collisions, subsequently shredded into a disk of material, and accreted by the white dwarf star (ringed object seen in the planet's sky).

Similarly, the terms Neptunes and hot Neptunes refer to planets less than about 10 percent of Jupiter's mass, and the term super-Earths refers to those planets that may well be rocky bodies only a few times as massive as Earth.

In between, we get a mopey subplot about Ben Grimm dealing with his new rocky body.

They were both bombarded in the chaotic, early solar system, but Ceres would have been the target of rockier bodies that did more damage than Pluto's icier associates.

Because many other rocky bodies, including Earth, Venus, and Mars, probably passed through a magma ocean stage as well, Borg's results may force scientists to adjust their theories about how all such objects have evolved.

Boulder, Colo. — July 3, 2013 — The surface of Mercury is rather different from those of well - known rocky bodies like the Moon and Mars.

Dawn's mission objective was the observation of two rocky bodies in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Not shown in the above illustrations are the numerous smaller bodies that inhabit the solar system: the satellites of the planets; the large number of asteroids (small rocky bodies) orbiting the Sun, mostly between Mars and Jupiter but also elsewhere; the comets (small icy bodies) which come and go from the inner parts of the solar system in highly elongated orbits and at random orientations to the ecliptic; and the many small icy bodies beyond Neptune in the Kuiper Belt.

But they do not fully understand how they form and there are many aspects of the formation of comets, planets and other rocky bodies that remain a mystery.

It solves a long - standing mystery about how dust particles in discs grow to larger sizes so that they can eventually form comets, planets and other rocky bodies.

As the years rolled by the planet was losing the fire of its youth, but it was also slimming down, shedding a few pesky kilometres from its round, rocky body.

They also are orbiting very close to the tidal radius, or distance at which gravitational tides from the white dwarf can rip apart a rocky body.

Astrophysicist Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Washington thinks this structural similarity gives a reason to suspect that these planets, too, are rocky bodies that formed much the way Earth did.

That would be bad news for any life on the rocky bodies, but Nayakshin thinks the intense X-rays and ultraviolet radiation so close to a black hole would prevent life from forming on these planets in the first place.

Although traveling between these airless, rocky bodies on a rocket - propelled zip line would certainly be thrilling, it would be a long trip; according to NASA, they're usually separated by at least 620,000 miles.

So how does the rocky body cast off so much material without any ice to vaporise?

Small, rocky bodies may aggregate gradually over hundreds of millions of years, while nearby — maybe even around the same star — Jupiter - size objects pull together in just a few hundred years.

But a planet that is 20 % larger than Earth may not be a rocky body like our home planet, some models suggest.

Fifty - four of the total number of planets detected, all of them larger than Earth, orbit within the habitable zone of their parent stars, a region temperate enough for water to remain liquid on the surface of a rocky body.

These worlds may be rocky bodies, a lot more like Earth than the giant gas balls discovered previously.

Astronomers have long suspected that the young, 12 - million - year - old star hosts a massive planet, since it is surrounded by a dusty disc of debris thought to be created by the collision of rocky bodies and infalling comets.

The rocky body is also the fastest known, whipping around its star in less than a day.

The rocky body — the largest yet to get a close flyby — seems to have been just large enough to avoid being reduced to a flying pile of rubble by eons of collisions with other asteroids.

In the prevailing theory of planet formation, called core accretion, dust grains stick together to form rocky worlds, and some of these rocky bodies then grow massive enough to attract surrounding gas, becoming gas giants like Jupiter.

To get a better sense of the role of chondrules in a fledgling solar system, the researchers first simulated collisions between protoplanets — rocky bodies between the size of an asteroid and the moon.

This is the first time a white dwarf with nitrogen has been discovered, and one of only a few known examples of white dwarfs that have been impacted by a rocky body that was rich in water ice.

nucleus (in astronomy) The rocky body of a comet, sometimes carrying a jacket of ice or frozen gases.