You're probably familiar with how the solar system looks today. There are eight officially recognized planets located more or less on the same plane, orbiting the sun. But have you ever given a ...

Our Solar System is believed to have formed from a cloud of gas and dust, the so-called solar nebula, which began to condense on itself gravitationally ~ 4.6 billion years ago. As this cloud ...

A small, inconspicuous meteorite may be about to change our understanding of how and when our solar system formed. Tiny shavings from the meteorite Northwest Africa 12264 are challenging the long-held ...

The Sun's formation caused temperature differences in the surrounding disk of gas and dust. Inner, hotter regions formed rocky planets from less volatile elements. Outer, colder regions allowed ...

Earth and Mars were formed from material that largely originated in the inner Solar System; only a few percent of the building blocks of these two planets originated beyond Jupiter’s orbit. A group of ...

Discovery of oxygen raises new questions about how solar system formed. In this undated photo, Rosetta finds oxygen on comet 67P. ESA/Rosetta/NavCam – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0 — -- The European Space ...

A new planetary system is forming around the young star HOPS-315. Scientists observed the earliest stages of planet formation around another star. The process involves the cooling and solidifying of ...

The newly identified cluster of Kuiper Belt objects lies about 4 billion miles from the Sun, offering fresh clues about how ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. McClure et al. Astronomers have witnessed the birth of a planetary ...

Mercury has long baffled astronomers because it defies much of what we know about planet formation. A new space mission ...

3I/ATLAS has now made its closest approach to the sun and Earth and is now heading back out toward the outer solar system. On ...