[NEWS] Five space science links: Moon, Mars, Planet Nine, white dwarfs, black holes

[rfmcdonald]

• Quanta Magazine looks at the latest theories seeking to explain the origins of the Moon. (At the very least, the collision that did form the Moon may have ben much more violent than originally thought.)


• Mars may be smaller than Venus and Earth because, in the early solar system, much mass was directed away from its orbit by the gas and ice giants. Universe Today reports.


• Gizmodo notes the discovery of another Kuiper Belt object with a strange orbit pointing to the possibility of Planet Nine.


• The Gaia satellite has turned up evidence for nearly fourteen thousand white dwarfs within 100 parsecs of our sun, a huge increase in numbers. Universe Today reports.


• The work and the thinking that went into proving the idea of thousands of black holes in close orbit of Sagittarius A* at the heart of our galaxy is impressive. Universe Today reports.