Meteorites and Earth are more similar than previously thought
It is commonly believed that Earth and meteorites reveal substantial differences. Today’s authors challenge this view based on their laboratory experiments.
Why Are Pulsar Planets Rare?
Pulsar planets were the first planets outside the solar system ever discovered, but they now appear to be very rare. What makes a pulsar planet so uncommon?
Insights into Planet Formation via Harry Potter Analogies
The authors of today’s astrobite try and assess how much knowledge you can actually gain about the first four Harry Potter books by only watching the fourth movie. In other words, what can you learn about planet formation by looking at observations of exoplanets?
Why is Mars so small?
J’onn J’onzz needs astronomers’ help figuring out why his home planet of Mars is smaller (and hence, less habitable) than the Earth. He already asked the rest of the Justice League, but they could not solve the problem. Can Drążkowska et al. save the day?
Further constraints on how to form planets
Observing protoplanetary disks with ALMA yields astonishing information about structures in disks. Today’s astrobite presents and discusses a thrilling disk with an inner dust cavity, as well as gaps and rings. Moreover the gaseous disk extends to much larger radii in gas than the dusty disk and may possibly be evidence for radial drift and effects of planet formation.
Driving planetary dynamos by giant impacts
Earlier than one billion years ago, Earth’s magnetic field had to be driven differently than today. But how? And what can we learn from this about magnetic fields on exoplanets?