Simulations reveal that Jupiter’s rapid growth disrupted the early solar system, creating rings where new planetesimals formed much later than expected. These late-forming bodies match the ages and ...

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Trans-Neptunian objects as small as 3 miles across have been directly characterized for the first time, as Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes surveyed 27 icy relics beyond Neptune, finding these ...

For only the third time in history, astronomers have detected a new interstellar visitor — an object from another star — blitzing into our solar system. First named A11pl3Z and now designated as ...

Astronomers have uncovered a massive new trans-Neptunian object, 2017 OF201, lurking at the edge of our solar system. With an orbit stretching 25,000 years and a size that may qualify it as a dwarf ...

An exoplanetary system about 116 light-years from Earth could flip the script on how planets form, according to researchers who discovered it using telescopes from NASA and the European Space Agency, ...

The search for an unknown planet in our solar system has inspired astronomers for more than a century. Now, a recent study suggests a potential new candidate, which the paper’s authors have dubbed ...

The standard story of the origin of our solar system has gone like this: 4.6 billion years ago, a giant cloud of dust hung frozen in space. Then the explosion of a nearby star caused part of that dust ...

Roughly four and a half billion years ago the planet Theia slammed into Earth, destroying itself, melting large portions of our planet’s mantle and ejecting a huge debris disk that later pulled ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

When the solar system first took up the task of building solid bodies—such as planets, moons and protoplanets—it basically ...