Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles used computer models to test a hotter view of the solar system’s two outer planets. Their arXiv study, submitted to The Astrophysical Journal, proposes that Uranus and Neptune may contain enormous hydrogen-rich magma oceans below their familiar blue clouds. The idea could reshape how scientists picture these…
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Researchers led by Northwestern University used Keck Observatory observations to uncover a striking pattern in the spins of distant worlds. Their study, published in The Astronomical Journal, found that giant gas planets tend to rotate faster than more massive brown dwarf companions after accounting for mass, size and age. The finding gives astronomers a new…
NASA’s Europa Clipper mission is heading toward one of the most revealing puzzles in the outer Solar System. Jupiter’s icy moon Europa has so few large impact craters that scientists think its surface has been repeatedly renewed from below, according to the mission’s Europa Clipper page. That clean ice may be the visible sign of…
A 2026 study in Geoarchaeology has revived one of space exploration’s most extreme survival stories. The study argues that several probes sent to Venus during the Cold War, including Soviet Venera spacecraft, may still be recognizable on the planet’s surface after decades of crushing pressure and furnace-like heat. That finding gives new weight to the…
