Space rocks may have bounced off baby Earth, but slammed into Venus

Those responses to long-ago collisions could help explain why the two worlds are so different

illustration of planets colliding

The early solar system may have been full of collisions between baby planets (one smashup shown in this artist’s illustration). But more of the fragments of those collisions stuck to Venus than to Earth, a new study suggests.

JPL-Caltech/NASA

Squabbling sibling planets may have hurled space rocks when they were young.