The bodies of our own solar system, in detail.
10 topics · 9 curated works
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
A Comet Model. I. The Acceleration of Comet Encke
Fred L. Whipple · 1950
Proposes that comets are dirty snowballs of ice and dust whose jets of sublimating gas explain otherwise unaccountable drifts in their orbits.
+6 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Planetary Science: A Lunar Perspective
Stuart Ross Taylor · 1982
Argues that the Moon's simpler, less erased geological record is the key to reading the early history of every rocky planet, including Earth's.
+1 more at this level
9 works
Fred L. Whipple
Proposes that comets are dirty snowballs of ice and dust whose jets of sublimating gas explain otherwise unaccountable drifts in their orbits.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Sagan & Mullen
Points out that a fainter young Sun should have left early Earth frozen over, and argues a denser greenhouse atmosphere must have kept it liquid instead — the faint young Sun paradox.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Smith et al.
Reports Voyager 1's close flyby of Jupiter and its moons, revealing active volcanism on Io and structure in the rings and atmosphere that no ground-based telescope could resolve.
Morabito, Synnott, Kupferman & Collins
Identifies a plume in a Voyager 1 navigation image as an active volcanic eruption on Io, the first volcanic activity ever observed on a body other than Earth.
Alvarez, Alvarez, Asaro & Michel
Finds a spike of iridium at the boundary layer marking the end of the dinosaurs and argues it can only be explained by the impact of a large asteroid.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Carr, Saunders, Strom & Wilhelms
Compares the surfaces of Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon and Mars side by side, arguing that impact cratering, volcanism and tectonics combine in different proportions to shape each one.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Jewitt & Luu
Reports the first object found beyond Neptune other than Pluto, confirming the belt of icy bodies that had been theorised for decades but never observed.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Stuart Ross Taylor
Argues that the Moon's simpler, less erased geological record is the key to reading the early history of every rocky planet, including Earth's.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Philip J. Armitage
Works through the physics of protoplanetary disks and planetesimal growth as a coherent sequence, from gas disk to formed planets, for readers who already know basic dynamics.
link checked 17 Sept 2026