Breaking Planet Chains and Cracking the Kepler Dichotomy
Why can’t more exoplanet systems be like TRAPPIST-1? Why do so many Kepler systems have only one transiting planet? Today’s paper tries to answer both questions.
Mugged by a Passing Star
A close encounter with another star can disrupt the protoplanetary disk of a young star, leaving a smaller disk behind. Can we learn anything about the encounter from the size of the remaining disk? Read on to find out!
Seeding Life on Other Worlds
Can life spread from Earth to the moons of Jupiter and Saturn on rock ejected from meteoroid collisions? The authors of this paper start on answering this question by asking if ejected material from Earth can even reach the gas giants’ moons. The answer is yes, so it’s possible that microbial Earthlings have already traveled a lot farther than human ones.