Active Asteroids
What happens when something looks like a comet but orbits like an asteroid?
Did Mercury Spin Backward?
Today, Mercury rotates only three times in two Mercury years. How did the planet get to this state? Was Mercury tidally locked in the past?
Alien Artifacts in our own Solar System?
Researchers at Penn State aim to determine the probability that artifacts from allien civilizations are present in our Solar System.
Looking for Lightning on Mars
Do dust storms cause lightning on Mars? This paper uses the Allen Telescope Array to search for electrostatic discharge on the Red Planet.
Triggering the formation of the Solar System
Could the interaction of the pre-solar core with a nearby supernova trigger the formation of our Solar System?
14 New Kuiper Belt Objects in the Southern Sky
A paper published on the archive this week reveals fourteen newly discovered Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) found using ground-based imaging in the Southern part of the sky. Three of these could be big enough to be dwarf planets! By learning about the population, orbital structures, and compositions of the largest objects in the Kuiper Belt, we can learn about the solar system formation and evolution.