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Articles on Planetary science

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Scientists still debate the origins of Earth’s life-sustaining elements. BlackJack3D/E+ via Getty Images

Earth may have had all the elements needed for life within it all along − contrary to theories that these elements came from meteorites

Scientists analyzing isotope ratios have found that many of the elements that make up life could be left over from Earth’s formation.
The stark landscape of the Moon as viewed by the Apollo 12 astronauts on their return to Earth. NASA / The Planetary Society

Scientists suspect there’s ice hiding on the Moon, and a host of missions from the US and beyond are searching for it

Some dark craters on the Moon are never exposed to light − ice could be hiding in these permanently shadowed regions, and India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission marked a big step toward finding it.
Perspective view of a lobate scarp on Mercury named Carnegie Rupes, colour-coded according to surface altitude. The crater near the middle is nearly 40 km across. NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington

Mercury: shrinking planet is still getting smaller – new research

Mercury has shrunk by7 km. Most of this happened long ago, but now we have evidence that it continues.
There was little time for water from the Earth’s atmosphere to contaminate the meteorite after it fell. Trustees of the Natural History Museum

A brief history of the UK’s Winchcombe meteorite

In 2021, searchers recovered a meteorite that fell over the UK just hours earlier. Scientists have now reconstructed its story.

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