NASA’s Proposed EVE Mission Aims to Solve the Radius Valley Mystery

A debate has been raging amongst planetary scientists for over a decade – why are there so few exoplanets with a radius of about 1.8 times that of the Earth? Exoplanets are currently largely grouped into two distinct groups – “super Earth” are below that size and have rocky interiors, whereas “Sub-Neptunes” are above that size limit and appear “puffier.” But we don’t really understand what about the path of planetary evolution forces this bifurcation. A new mission proposal, called…

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