Two massive planets may have once existed in early solar system before being ejected, leaving behind evidence in unusual ...

Moon impact 3.5 billion years ago reveals hidden Solar System history through tiny mineral grains. The discovery shows asteroid bombardment continued long after the Late Heavy Bombardment period.

How common are Earth-like planets in the universe? When I started working on supernova explosions, I never imagined that my research would eventually lead me to ask a question about the origin of ...

A small, inconspicuous meteorite may be about to change our understanding of how and when our solar system formed. Tiny shavings from the meteorite Northwest Africa 12264 are challenging the long-held ...

The dwarf planet Vesta is helping scientists better understand the earliest era in the formation of our solar system. Two recent papers involving scientists from the University of California, Davis, ...

Before the Earth and other planets formed, the young sun was still surrounded by cosmic gas and dust. Over the millennia, rock fragments of various sizes formed from the dust. Many of these became ...

The early solar system may have been far more chaotic than we ever imagined. A new study published in Icarus suggests that our solar system might have once hosted an additional giant planet, whose ...

New studies offer a clearer picture of how the outer solar system formed and evolved based on analyses of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) and centaurs. The findings reveal the distribution of ices in ...

Age data for certain classes of meteorite have made it possible to gain new findings on the origin of small water-rich astronomical bodies in the early solar system. These planetesimals continually ...