During a hypervelocity impact, both the impactor and target materials evaporate, generating an impact vapor plume with temperatures reaching several thousand K.
The orbital regime of a terrestrial planet plays a significant role in shaping its atmospheric dynamics, climate, and hence potential habitability.
This work describes new dynamical simulations of terrestrial planet formation. The simulations started at the protoplanetary disk stage, when planetesimals formed and accreted into protoplanets, and continued past the late […]
Geology is full of detective stories about Earth’s history, and a new paper in Geology by University of New Mexico Distinguished Professors Emeritus Karl Karlstrom and Laurie Crossey, along with […]
Meteoroid entry into planetary atmospheres generates bow shocks, resulting in high-temperature gas conditions that drive chemical reactions.
Cometary impacts have been invoked as an atmosphere-independent method of stockpiling hydrogen cyanide (HCN), a key prebiotic feedstock molecule, into environments favourable for the onset of prebiotic chemistry on the […]
Cosmochemical studies have proposed that Earth accreted roughly 5-10% of its mass from carbonaceous (CC) material, with a large fraction delivered late via its final impactor, Theia (the Moon-forming impactor). […]
The collapse of tropical forests during Earth’s most catastrophic extinction event was the primary cause of the prolonged global warming which followed, according to new research.
![Scheme of a geothermal valley between two snow-covered Hadean volcanoes. The fumaroles, thermal springs, apron pools, and terracettes are shown based on the reconstruction of the 3.48 Ga old Hadean geothermal system. On the right, various reactions of CO2 sequestration in a Hadean volcanic system are indicated, see Section 3.2.5 and Section 3.2.6. Inserts: (A) volcanic fumaroles, image from https://home.nps.gov/articles/000/fumaroles.htm, credit: USGS. (B) Schematic cross section of a pH-neutral hot spring, redrawn with modifications from [341,342]. (C) White Terraces of New Zealand as an example of volcanic terracettes (painted by Charles Bloomfield in 1884, two years before the terraces were buried under the waters of the lake Rotomahana following the eruption of Mt. Tarawera. Image credit: Museum of New Zeeland, https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/42254, accessed on 23 December 2024.). (D) Interconversion of nitriles, amides, and ammonium salts of organic acids, represented by their simplest species, in geothermal pools in the presence of inorganic catalysts; each of the nitrogen-containing compounds shown is considered as a substrate for further synthetic reactions. Formamide and other amides, as the least volatile components, may have sustained/buffered the whole system. -- Life via PubMed](https://i0.wp.com/astrobiology.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Origin-Of-The-RNA-World-In.png?resize=1200%2C720&ssl=1)
The ubiquitous, evolutionarily oldest RNAs and proteins exclusively use rather rare zinc as transition metal cofactor and potassium as alkali metal cofactor, which implies their abundance in the habitats of […]
We investigate the melt production of planetary impacts as a function of planet size (R/REarth=0.1-1.5), impactor size (L=1-1000 km), and core size ratio (Rcore/R=0.2-0.8) using a combination of parameterized convection […]
