What's special about Chiron's rings is that they're still forming; this marks the first time astronomers have ever seen a ...

Jupiter, the colossal planet at the heart of our solar system, has long been a subject of intrigue. Recent research from Rice ...

Not all of the solar system’s building blocks formed simultaneously. Some of the first solid bodies, or planetesimals, formed ...

New research from Rice University suggests that the giant planet Jupiter reshaped the early solar system in dramatic ways, ...

There are a couple of ways that scientists can date planets, so which planets formed first in our solar system?

"The Solar Family" is an 11-minute educational film produced by Encyclopedia Britannica Films in 1936. It presents the evolution of the solar system through the lens of the planetesimal hypothesis, a ...

The James Webb Telescope captures the beginning of planetary formation around the young star HOPS-315 for the first time.

Astronomers are studying 3I/ATLAS, a rare interstellar comet nearing the Sun. Despite viral claims calling it an 'alien ...

Scientists from MIT and their colleagues have estimated the lifetime of the solar nebula — a key stage during which much of the solar system evolution took shape. This new estimate suggests that the ...

New work from Carnegie’s Alan Boss and Sandra Keiser provides surprising new details about the trigger that may have started the earliest phases of planet formation in our solar system. It is ...

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 ...

When you look at the solar system, you might notice that the planets' orbits are tilted, and oddities in the protoplanetary ...