Detailed simulations of planetary formation are revealing how tiny grains of dust turn into giant planets and could shed light on where to find new Earth-like worlds.
Researchers of the Universities of Bern and Zürich and of ETH Zürich show how Jupiter was formed. Data collected from meteorites had indicated that the growth of the giant planet was delayed for 2 million years. Now, the ...
For decades, scientists have theorized that beyond the edge of the solar system, at a distance of up to 50,000 AU (0.79 ly) from the sun, there lies a massive cloud of icy planetesimals known as the Oort Cloud. Named in honor ...
Scientists believe the solar system was formed some 4.6 billion years ago when a cloud of gas and dust collapsed under gravity possibly triggered by a cataclysmic explosion from a nearby massive star or supernova. As this ...
For nearly a century, astronomers have puzzled over the curious variability of young stars residing in the Taurus-Auriga constellation some 450 light years from Earth. One star in particular has drawn astronomers' attention. ...
A meteorite has been recovered from a remote area of Botswana. The event is one of a kind as the meteor was identified before entering the atmosphere, and its fall and retrieval documented. It's only the second time this ...
The crust that encases rocky planets and makes possible the emergence of life took shape on Mars earlier than thought and at least 100 million years sooner than on Earth, researchers said Wednesday.
The solar system as we know it formed about 4.6 billion years ago as fields of interstellar dust orbiting the sun aggregated into planets and smaller objects. Presolar dust particles no longer exist in the inner solar system, ...
A team of researchers from France and the U.S. has created a computer simulation of the development of the solar system focusing on Jupiter and the origins of its moons. In their paper uploaded to the arXiv preprint server, ...
The SPHERE instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile allows astronomers to suppress the brilliant light of nearby stars in order to obtain a better view of the regions surrounding them. This collection of new ...
