Leonardo Testi and team investigate the initial conditions for planet formation in this special astronomy focus ...

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 ...

Short-lived radioisotopes such as aluminum-26 influenced early solar system heat, water retention and the formation of Earth-like rocky planets, according to meteorite analyses and models.

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

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 ...

Stephen has degrees in science (Physics major) and arts (English Literature and the History and Philosophy of Science), as well as a Graduate Diploma in Science Communication. Stephen has degrees in ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Observations of the young HOPS-315 star system show an environment analogous to what our own nascent Solar System would have looked like billions of ...

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 ...

The planets in solar do not have circular orbit around the Sun, including Earth which goes around in an elliptical orbit. A ...

Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes, planets with sizes between Earth and Neptune, constitute approximately one-third of known exoplanets but are absent in our solar system. Their prevalence elsewhere and ...