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 ...

In 2025, astronomers uncovered more than 100 new moons orbiting planets in our solar system, an exciting discovery that could ...

For decades, astronomers have discovered hundreds of protoplanetary disks—structures believed to represent the early stages of our own solar system. However, most of these discoveries lie within our ...

Illustration comparing the planets of the Solar System and the Sun on the same scale. The planets are shown to scale relative to each other but their distances are not. From left to right the bodies ...

The discovery of a planet that is far too massive for its sun is calling into question what was previously understood about the formation of planets and their solar systems. The discovery of a planet ...

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

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 solar system is 4.54 billion years old, based on rock dating. Gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) likely formed first. Ice giants (Uranus and Neptune) probably formed next. Rocky planets formed last, ...

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 ...

This video is an artistic representation of a newly discovered system, LHS 3154, which contains a planet far more massive for its sun than current models would predict. UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – The ...