ScienceDaily: Space & Time News

A compositional link between planets and their respective host star has long been assumed in astronomy. Scientists now deliver empirical evidence to support the assumption -- and partly contradict it at the same time.

Not all ice is the same. The solid form of water comes in more than a dozen different - sometimes more, sometimes less crystalline - structures, depending on the conditions of pressure and temperature in the environment. Superionic ice is a special crystalline form, half solid, half liquid - and electrically conductive. Its existence has been predicted on the basis of various models and has already been observed on several occasions under - very extreme - laboratory conditions. New results provide another piece of the puzzle in the spectrum of the manifestations of water. And they may also help to explain the unusual magnetic fields of the planets Uranus and Neptune, which contain a lot of water.

Solar prominences hover above the visible solar disk like giant clouds, held there by a supporting framework of magnetic forces, originating from layers deep within the Sun. The magnetic lines of force are moved by ever-present gas currents -- and when the supporting framework moves, so does the prominence cloud. A research team has observed how magnetic forces lifted a prominence by 25,000 kilometers -- about two Earth diameters -- within ten minutes.

A new article proposes that space probes could hitch a ride with 'centaurs' as they become comets. Along the way, the spacecraft would gather data that would otherwise be impossible to record -- including how comets, Earth-like planets, and even the solar system formed.