Planet-Forming Disks

The solar system formed when an enormous cloud of gas and dust began to collapse and rotate. As it spun faster and faster, it formed a disk which helped feed into forming the young sun in the center of it all.  From this disk, small particles of dust started sticking...

Climate Stability and a Hike along a Triassic Coral Reef

From the DistantEarths blog of Daniel Apai After two hours of hike up on a rocky trail in the Italian Alps, finally I stand at an elevation just above 2,500 meters, staring at a breathtaking and unique mountain range, the Dolomites, that holds an exciting clue to the...

Taking Pictures of Alien Worlds

We know of a lot of exoplanets. Most, though, we know of only by indirect means – typically via the planet occulting some of the starlight during an eclipse or changing the star’s velocity due to the planet’s own gravity. As of today (June 29, 2016) the exoplanet...

Building Planetary Systems: The Genesis Database

  The planets of our solar system formed out of a swirling disk of gas and dust billions of years ago. The material that accreted to become the Earth lacked water and organic material because it formed at a distance that was too close to the sun for such...

The Future of Exoplanet Research

By Daniel Apai Includes interview with Nick Siegler and Shawn Domagal-Goldman Over the weekend, at the Hilton on the San Diego Bay, a small group met to speak about the present and future of NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration program. To someone not in the field of...