Forming Rings in a Protoplanetary Disk
The authors of today’s paper show that the locations of the protoplanetary gaps in HL Tau are to be expected from the condensation points of common ices in the disk.
Dust at Cosmic Dawn: Clues from the Milky Way’s Center
Observations of dust near the remains of a supernova in the center of our galaxy could have implications for dust production in the earliest galaxies.
Mercury’s surprising density: What about magnets?
A new model explains Mercury’s major density with magnetism.
Pluto’s Dusty Neighborhood
Pluto’s small satellites have very low escape velocities, which means that dust kicked up by impacts has a relatively easy time of escaping rather than settling back down to the little moon’s surface. Today’s paper looks at the fates of that dust.
Probing high redshifts with gamma-ray bursts
Gamma-ray bursts are the most energetic explosions in the Universe. Today, we discuss how to use one GRB as a beacon to study the properties of a high redshift galaxy, the composition of the gas in the intergalactic medium at high redshift and the formation of dust in the Universe.
Dust in SPACE: Studying the growth of planetesimals with a suborbital rocket experiment
By sending a chamber of dust on a suborbital ballistic rocket, the authors of this paper hope to find out how planetesimals form.