Planetary science

An explanation of the Earth’s ‘missing Xe’ problem that involves multiple magma ocean stages combined with atmospheric loss is proposed.

Binarity and multiplicity in general strongly affect the properties of emerging stars, as well as the physical and chemical structures of protoplanetary disks and therefore potentially any emerging planetary systems.

Dynamical simulations of the early Solar System show that the giant planets’ instability was triggered by the dispersal of the Sun’s gaseous disk, constrained by astronomical observations to be a few to ten million years after the birth of the Solar System.

Analysis is presented that indicates that there is strong evidence that SiO or Mg, the major constituents of silicate condensates, must be present in gaseous form in the atmosphere of ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-178b.

Using data gathered from the microphones of the Perseverance rover, the first characterization of the acoustic environment on Mars is presented, showing two distinct values for the speed of sound in CO₂-dominated atmosphere.

A hydrated, heterogeneous mantle resulting from magma ocean solidification is shown to be key to the rapid formation of Earth’s habitable surface environment during the Hadean era.

The krypton isotopic pattern of Earth’s deep mantle indicates that volatile-rich material from the outer Solar System was delivered early in Earth’s accretion history.

A modelling study describing the formation of the polygonal surface structures in Sputnik Planitia on Pluto shows that convection driven by ice sublimation can generate planetary-scale surface patterns.

Through an idealized set of simulations, with a model that incorporates key physics, research reveals dramatic swings between massive rainfall events and extended dry periods in hothouse climates.

The C/O ratio of the transiting hot Jupiter WASP-77Ab is measured here and found to be approximately solar, though the (C+O)/H ratio is subsolar.

A carbon monoxide gas ring co-orbiting with dusty debris is observed in the outer terrestrial planet region of the star HD 172555, which indicates that a planetary-scale impact took place.

Isotopic analysis of basalt clasts returned from the Moon by the Chang’e-5 mission indicates that the rocks were derived from a mantle source that lacked potassium, rare-earth elements and phosphorus.

Water abundance and hydrogen isotope compositions of two-billion-year-old basalt samples returned from the Moon by the Chang’e-5 mission suggest that the samples came from a relatively dry mantle source.

Basalt samples returned from the Moon by the Chang’e-5 mission are revealed to be two billion years old by radioisotopic dating, providing insight on the volcanic history of the Moon.

Global climate model simulations of early Venus and Earth show that differences in the cloud regimes prevented ocean formation on Venus but not on Earth.

The authors show not only that planetary bodies around white dwarfs can survive but also that more than half of white dwarfs might have Jovian planetary companions.

The absence of fine regolith on the asteroid Bennu is due to the high porosity of its rocks, which compress rather than fragment after impacts and exhibit slow thermal cracking.

Lake breach flooding rapidly eroded almost a quarter of the volume of incised valleys on early Mars, influencing the topography of the wider Martian landscape.

High-resolution observations confirm that Jupiter’s global upper atmosphere is heated by transport of energy from the polar aurora.

Cloud-top thermal images obtained by the Akatsuki orbiter show that Venus has almost null mean meridional circulation at the cloud top, because poleward circulation on the dayside is offset by equatorward circulation on the nightside.

Observations of ¹³CO in the atmosphere of a young, accreting super-Jupiter indicate a ¹³C-rich atmosphere, which is attributed to the accretion of carbon from ices enriched in ¹³C through fractionation.

A revised date for the Laacher See eruption using measurements of subfossil trees shifts the chronology of European varved lakes relative to the Greenland ice core record, synchronizing the onset of the Younger Dryas across the North Atlantic–European sector.

The Gaia database is used to identify stars from which astronomers on orbiting planets could see Earth transiting the Sun in the past, present and future.

High-resolution ultraviolet and optical spectra of a large sample of comets show that Fe i and Ni i lines are ubiquitous, even when the comets are far from the Sun.

Atomic nickel vapour is found in the cold coma of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov at a distance of 2.3 astronomical units, equivalent to an equilibrium temperature of 180 kelvin.

A model for eruptions resulting in caldera collapse reconciles observations of quasi-periodic stick–slip events along annular faults and the large erupted volumes characteristic of such events, highlighting the role of topography-generated pressures.

The signatures of water, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, methane, ammonia and acetylene are observed in the transmission spectrum of the hot Jupiter HD 209458b, with abundance ratios suggesting a super-solar carbon-to-oxygen ratio.

Sulfur isotope and iron–sulfur–carbon systematics on marine sediments indicate that permanent atmospheric oxygenation occurred around 2.22 billion years ago, about 100 million years later than currently estimated.

Unexpected intervals of low ²³⁰Th concentration in marine sediment cores are explained by considering that during at least two such periods, the Arctic Ocean and Nordic seas were composed entirely of fresh water and covered by a thick ice shelf.

X-ray diffraction measurements of solid carbon compressed to pressures of about two terapascals (approximately twenty million atmospheres) find that carbon retains a diamond structure even under these extreme conditions.

When the Philae lander bounced on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, it exposed primitive icy-dust material within cometary boulders; the intrinsic strength and porosity of this material is reported.

Analysis of the size and depth of craters on boulders on the asteroid (101955) Bennu indicates that Bennu has been in near-Earth space for 1.75 ± 0.75 million years.

The architecture of planetary systems is shown to be strongly affected by stellar clustering in position-velocity phase space; hot Jupiters occur preferentially at high density, suggesting that their extreme orbits originate from environmental perturbations.

A giant planet candidate roughly the size of Jupiter but more than 14 times as massive is observed by TESS and other instruments to be transiting the white dwarf star WD 1856+534.

Simulations using machine-learning-based interatomic potentials in dense hydrogen overcome system size and timescale limitations, providing evidence of a supercritical behaviour of high-pressure liquid hydrogen and reconciling theoretical and experimental discrepancies.

Small lightning flashes detected on Jupiter by Juno have shallow origins above the 2-bar level of Jupiter’s atmosphere where temperatures are too low for liquid water to exist.

The night-time seeing (the extent to which a star’s light is blurred by the atmosphere) at Dome A, the highest part on the Antarctic plateau, can be as good as 0.13 arcseconds above a height of only 8 metres.

Observations of TOI-849b reveal a radius smaller than Neptune’s but a large mass of about 40 Earth masses, indicating that the planet is the remnant core of a gas giant.

The high obliquity and low rotation period of the Kuiper belt object (2014) MU₆₉ and other similar contact binaries is successfully reproduced from the collision and post-collision characteristics of initially wide binaries.

A rare nitrogen isotopologue is used to detect contamination by air in volcanic gas effusions, and thereby derive the isotopic compositions of mantle endmembers.

Thermal imaging data obtained from the spacecraft Hayabusa2 reveal that the carbonaceous asteroid 162173 Ryugu is an object of unusually high porosity.

Absorption lines of iron in the dayside atmosphere of an ultrahot giant exoplanet disappear after travelling across the nightside, showing that the iron has condensed during its travel.

Analyses of microbial communities that live 10–750 m below the seafloor at Atlantis Bank, Indian Ocean, provide insights into how these microorganisms survive by coupling energy sources to organic and inorganic carbon resources.

Ruthenium isotope compositions of the oldest preserved mantle rocks from Greenland imply that volatile-rich outer Solar System material was not delivered to Earth until very late in the planet’s formation.

Spectral analysis of the VIRTIS dataset shows two opposite seasonal colour cycles in the coma and on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, indicating an orbital water-ice cycle.

Bayesian modelling of radiometric age estimates provides a robust chronology for Homo erectus at Ngandong (Java), confirming that this site currently represents the last known occurrence of this species.

Observations of an accretion disk around a hot white dwarf star reveal that the chemical abundances in its disk are similar to those thought to exist deep in icy giant planets, so the white dwarf must be accreting a giant planet.

A global dataset of river longitudinal profiles shows that river profiles become straighter with increasing aridity and numerical modelling suggests that this can be explained by rainfall–runoff regimes in different climate zones.