In The News: Department of Physics and Astronomy
UNLV professor Michael Pravica explains how physics relate to modern day driving, seat belts, teen car stunts, traffic crashes, and more.
Our solar system may have once been a much more crowded place than it is today.
A study has suggested at least one super-Earth sized planet may have formed in the early days of the solar system before being devoured by the sun.
At least one super-Earth — a planet that is larger than Earth, but smaller than Neptune — could have formed close to the Sun, suggests a new study.
A super-Earth may have once formed close to the sun.
Findings of a new study suggest that this young super-Earth formed after clearing up the solid objects that lay between the sun and Mercury. Unfortunately, this primordial world was eventually consumed by the solar system's star after succumbing to its gravity.
From studies of extrasolar systems, it is apparent that planetary systems around other stars are as varied as the planets they contain and that no one system is like another. Nonetheless, more than half of the observed Sun-like stars in the solar neighbourhood have one or more super–Earth planets that orbit their host star within days to months - a feature that is lacking in our own Solar System. So, why isn’t Earth accompanied by a much larger neighbor?
Listener Hutch Humphreys of San Diego sent Marketplace this question: “I was wondering what research has gone into the various algorithms airlines use for boarding passengers, and why most of those algorithms do not seem to work very well.”
There are planets close enough to each other that could share life and boost its survival, a new study suggests. Scientists are exploring the potential presence of "multihabitable systems," planetary systems with more than one habitable planet.
Aside from a handful of astronauts, the only living beings to have seen an inhabited planet looming large in the sky come from science fiction.
Is there life on other planets? A recent study by Jason Steffen from the University of Nevada in Las Vegas is shedding new light on this persistently challenging question.
Dr. Mario Livio says even Albert Einstein made mistakes. His biggest one involved not realizing the universe was expanding at the fast pace that it is.
THE cosmos may have good and bad neighborhoods. Life is most likely to evolve in giant elliptical galaxies, whereas dwarf galaxies are thought to be the least hospitable – with the spiral Milky Way falling in between.
