Solar system’s main asteroid belt may harbor icy interlopers from beyond Neptune

October 13th, 2009 LONDON - Two independent scientific teams have found what may be the first direct evidence of water ice on the surface of an asteroid, a discovery that lends support to the idea that asteroids could have helped deliver water to the early Earth. Asteroids are generally considered to be rocky, and comets icy.

October 13th, 2009 LONDON - Astronomers have identified the cosmic version of 'Peter Pan', namely a 600 km-wide asteroid that started out on the process of becoming a planet but never grew up into the real thing. Called '2 Pallas', it is one of the largest asteroids in the Solar System.

September 21st, 2009 SYDNEY - Researchers have discovered an unusual kind of meteorite in the Western Australian desert and have uncovered where in the solar system it came from, a new finding suggests. Meteorites are the only surviving physical record of the formation of our solar system and by analysing them researchers can glean valuable information about the conditions that existed when the early solar system was being formed.

September 18th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a very rare finding, scientists have discovered an unusual kind of meteorite in the Western Australian desert and have uncovered that it came from the innermost main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Meteorites are the only surviving physical record of the formation of our Solar System.

September 14th, 2009 LONDON - Scientists, using the Cassini spacecraft's Magnetospheric Imaging instrument (MIMI), have detected a new, temporary radiation belt at Saturn, located around the orbit of its moon Dione at about 377,000 km from the centre of the planet. Radiation belts, like Earth's Van Allen belts, have been discovered at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

September 14th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new study that models the cratering history of Vesta and Ceres, which are the largest two objects in the asteroid belt, could help pinpoint when Jupiter began to form during the evolution of the early Solar System. The study, carried out by scientists at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, explored the hypothesis that one or both objects formed during Jupiter's formation by modeling their cratering histories during the birth of the giant planet.

August 18th, 2009 LONDON - New computer simulations have suggested that dense swarms of asteroids collapsed under their own gravity to make the building blocks of the planets in our solar system. The planets are thought to have formed from a disc of dust and gas around the infant sun.

July 21st, 2009 LONDON - A new research says that asteroid-sized balls of magma hurtled through our infant solar system, and spray from their many collisions provided much of the raw material that formed Earth and its rocky siblings. According to a report in New Scientist, this is according to a new take on an old theory that challenges the notion that the solar system started out as a placid sea of dust motes which simply clumped together to form planets.

July 15th, 2009 Space invaders: Asteroid belt has rocks from afarWASHINGTON — A new astronomy theory says the solar system's main asteroid belt is littered with icy invaders from far away. The so-called invaders are asteroids that seem more like primitive frozen comets than the baked rocks that make up the overwhelming majority of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter.

July 10th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new theory by a University of Melbourne physicist has said that Galileo knew he had discovered a new planet, that we now know as Neptune, in the year 1613, 234 years before its official discovery date. Professor David Jamieson, Head of the School of Physics, has put the theory forward.

July 7th, 2009 SYDNEY - Galileo's notebooks contain hidden clues that is likely to clinch his discovery of Neptune in 1613, 234 years before the date of discovery accepted now, according to a new theory. David Jamieson, who heads the Melbourne University (MU) School of Physics, is investigating the notebooks of Galileo from 400 years ago.

June 11th, 2009 London, June 11 (ANI: A new analysis of craters of the Moon has suggested that the shattered remnants of a dwarf planet may have bombarded the inner planets in the early solar system. According to a report in New Scientist, several large impact scars on the moon appear to be around 3.9 billion years old, suggesting that the Earth and other objects of the inner solar system were heavily pounded at that time.

May 27th, 2009 LONDON - Tomorrow morning, sky watchers, using Jupiter as a guiding light, will be able to catch a glimpse of Neptune, the most distant planet in the solar system. The gas giant Neptune is too far-flung to be visible to the naked eye.

March 27th, 2009 LONDON - Scientists have used a virtual model to investigate options to save the Earth from an asteroid impact. According to a report in New Scientist, the model was developed by a team led by David Dearborn of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, which modelled the impact of a nuclear explosion on an asteroid's trajectory.

March 26th, 2009 LONDON - Astronomers, for the first time, have observed a rare asteroid as it was hurtling towards our planet and have captured the only spectrum of it before it exploded in our atmosphere, which may lead to an advanced warning system for Earth. The observation was made by UK astronomers, using the Science and Technology Facilities Council's (STFC) William Herschel Telescope on La Palma.