Astronomy and planetary science articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • News & Views |

    Earth’s formation by the accretion of volatile-rich carbonaceous chondrite-like materials, without a need for exotic building blocks or secondary volatile loss, is supported by recognition of a plateau pattern for highly volatile elements.

    • Zaicong Wang

  • News & Views |

    Extreme temperature swings and deteriorating environments are perhaps what killed most life in the end-Permian extinction, suggest climate model simulations. Siberian Traps volcanism probably triggered the events.

    • Ying Cui

  • News & Views |

    Estimates of carbon in the deep mantle vary by more than an order of magnitude. Coupled volcanic CO2 emission data and magma supply rates reveal a carbon-rich mantle plume source region beneath Hawai'i with 40% more carbon than previous estimates.

    • Peter H. Barry

  • Editorial |

    Born from astronomy, the study of planets is becoming increasingly geoscience. As divisions between disciplines continue to blur in Solar System studies, at Nature Geoscience we are looking forward to exciting joint projects with Nature Astronomy.

  • Letter |

    Saturn is brighter than expected for a gas giant of its age. Calculations of Saturn’s thermal evolution show that the presence of layered convection in Saturn’s interior—much like that observed in the Earth’s oceans—would have slowed the planet’s cooling and may explain Saturn’s anomalous luminosity.

    • Jérémy Leconte
    •  & Gilles Chabrier

  • Article |

    Lunar samples suggest that the inner Solar System was bombarded by asteroids about 4 Gyr ago. Radiometric ages of meteorites suggest an unusual number of high-velocity asteroids at this time, consistent with a dynamical origin of the bombardment in which the asteroids were pushed by outer planet migration onto highly eccentric orbits.

    • S. Marchi
    • , W. F. Bottke
    •  & C. T. Russell

  • Letter |

    A whirling vortex has been observed in the atmosphere at the south pole of Venus. Cloud motions tracked by the Venus Express spacecraft suggest that the south polar vortex is long-lived, erratic and baroclinic in character.

    • I. Garate-Lopez
    • , R. Hueso
    •  & P. Drossart

  • Commentary |

    Over the past fifty years, NASA has pushed the frontiers of science and exploration to the edges of our Solar System. Declining funding for research and robotic missions may leave planetary exploration unfinished and young scientists stranded.

    • Paul O. Hayne

  • Editorial |

    Extrasolar planet research is booming. We welcome submissions with links to the geosciences.

  • Commentary |

    The dawn of exoplanet discovery has unearthed a rich tapestry of planets different from anything encountered in the Solar System. Geoscientists can and should be in the vanguard of investigating what is out there in the Universe.

    • Raymond T. Pierrehumbert

  • News & Views |

    Thirty years ago, the spacecraft Pioneer Venus observed the peak and decline of sulphur dioxide levels above Venus's clouds. Similar observations by Venus Express reveal a surprisingly variable venusian atmosphere.

    • Larry W. Esposito

  • Letter |

    A pulse of sulphur dioxide in Venus’s upper atmosphere was observed by the Pioneer Venus spacecraft in the 1970s and 1980s and attributed to volcanism. Recent sulphur dioxide measurements from Venus Express indicate decadal-scale fluctuations in sulphur dioxide above Venus’s cloud tops in an atmosphere that is more dynamic than expected.

    • Emmanuel Marcq
    • , Jean-Loup Bertaux
    •  & Denis Belyaev

  • News & Views |

    The surface of the Moon is not totally devoid of water. Analyses of lunar soils reveal that impact glasses contain significant amounts of water, with an isotopic composition that is indicative of an origin from the solar wind.

    • Marc Chaussidon

  • News & Views |

    Enigmatically, some landslides flow farther than normal frictional resistance allows. Cassini images of Saturn's icy moon Iapetus reveal a multitude of long-runout landslides that may have been enabled by flash heating along the sliding surface.

    • Antoine Lucas

  • Article |

    The great distance travelled by long-runout landslides, observed previously on the Earth and Mars, requires a mechanism of friction reduction. Identification and analysis of long-runout landslides on Saturn’s moon Iapetus suggests that the Iapetian landslides are enabled by flash heating of the icy sliding surface.

    • Kelsi N. Singer
    • , William B. McKinnon
    •  & Jeffery M. Moore

  • Letter |

    The mantles of the terrestrial planets contain elemental abundances that suggest accretion continued at a late stage, after core formation. Geochemical data of meteorites from differentiated asteroids are consistent with such a late accretion event, suggesting that the phenomenon occurred throughout the Solar System and was related to planet formation.

    • James M. D. Day
    • , Richard J. Walker
    •  & Douglas Rumble III

  • Editorial |

    The Earth's magnetic field protects us from solar activity, but the Moon and Mars are more exposed. The upcoming solar maximum is the perfect time to observe how our dynamic Sun affects its planets.

  • Letter |

    On the Moon, extensional tectonic features have only been observed close to the influence of the mare basalt-filled basins and floor-fractured craters. Analysis of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera images reveals several potentially very young extensional tectonic features in the farside highlands, implying that extensional stresses may locally exceed compressional ones.

    • Thomas R. Watters
    • , Mark S. Robinson
    •  & Brett W. Denevi

  • Research Highlights |

    • Tamara Goldin

  • Letter |

    Saturn’s moon Titan has a dense atmosphere, but its thermal structure is poorly understood. Simulations with a three-dimensional general circulation model suggest that Titan has a lower atmospheric structure with two boundary layers: a seasonal deep layer, and a shallower one that develops during the course of each day.

    • Benjamin Charnay
    •  & Sébastien Lebonnois

  • Letter |

    The stability over time of the zonal jets on the giant planets has been debated. An analysis of observations from the Cassini spacecraft reveals an acceleration of wind velocities in Saturn’s high-altitude equatorial jet between 2004 and 2009, by 20 m s−1 at tropopause level and by 60 m s−1 in the stratosphere.

    • Liming Li
    • , Xun Jiang
    •  & Kevin H. Baines

  • News & Views |

    Analysis of the first Apollo samples suggested that Earth's only satellite was bone dry. Spacecraft data and improved analysis techniques now indicate that the Moon is more volatile-rich and complex than previously thought.

    • David J. Lawrence

  • Letter |

    Phyllosilicate minerals are rare in the Noachian-aged crust of the northern lowlands of Mars, compared with the tropical highlands. Geochemical and climate modelling suggest that this dichotomy is consistent with the presence of a cold ocean fringed by cold-based glaciers.

    • Alberto G. Fairén
    • , Alfonso F. Davila
    •  & James F. Kasting

  • News & Views |

    An exotic arrow-shaped cloud was discovered in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan last year. Numerical modelling shows how a large-scale atmospheric wave can naturally shape tropical clouds to such an arrow.

    • Tetsuya Tokano

  • Letter |

    Saturn’s moon Titan exhibits an active weather cycle that involves methane. An analysis of cloud observations and simulations with a general circulation model reveals that convection in Titan’s atmosphere is organized through an interplay of two wave modes, leading to local rates of precipitation of up to twenty times the average.

    • Jonathan L. Mitchell
    • , Máté Ádámkovics
    •  & Elizabeth P. Turtle

  • News & Views |

    Volcanic deposits on the Moon are almost entirely composed of basaltic lava flows that make up the dark and extensive mare plains. High-resolution images and compositional data now reveal rare, non-mare volcanism on the Moon's farside.

    • Noah Petro

  • Article |

    Non-basaltic volcanism is rare on the Moon and has been found predominantly on the lunar nearside. Analysis of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera images and spectral data reveal the presence of compositionally evolved, non-basaltic volcanism on the lunar farside.

    • Bradley L. Jolliff
    • , Sandra A. Wiseman
    •  & David A. Paige

  • News & Views |

    Chondritic meteorites are remnants of the ancient Solar System. Analysis of the dust rims often found on their constituent particles shows that the rims were swept up while the particles wafted about and collided in a weakly turbulent protoplanetary nebula.

    • Jeff Cuzzi

Browse broader subjects

Browse narrower subjects

Browse Astronomy and planetary science across other nature.com journals