Planetary Formation
Exoplanetary System Found With 6 Worlds in Orbital Resonance
200 light-years away from Earth, there's a K-type main-sequence star named TOI (TESS Object of Interest) 178. When Adrian Leleu,…
Pluto and Other Kuiper Belt Objects Started Out With Water Oceans, and Have Been Slowly Freezing Solid for Billions of Years
It seems unlikely that an ocean could persist on a world that never gets closer than 30 astronomical units from…
More Pictures of Planet-Forming Disks Around Young Stars
Astronomy is advancing to the point where we can see planets forming around young stars. This was an unthinkable development…
Are the Gaps in These Disks Caused by Planets?
Astronomers like observing distant young stars as they form. Stars are born out of a molecular cloud, and once enough…
Mars Was Hit By a Lot of Protoplanets Early in its History, Taking Longer to Form than Previously Thought.
There are around 61,000 meteorites on Earth, or at least that's how many have been found. Out of those, about…
Planets Started Out From Dust Clumping Together. Here’s How
A new study by a team of German physicists and an American biomedical engineer has solved a long-standing problem in…
New Ring of Dust Discovered in the Inner Solar System
Discovering new things in space is a regular occurrence. Astronomers keep finding more distant objects in the outer reaches of…
Here are 20 Protoplanetary Disks, With Newly Forming Planets Carving Out Gaps in the Gas and Dust
A new survey by an ALMA collaboration has resulted in stunning images of 20 nearby protoplanetary disks, which shows the…
This Meteorite is One of the Few Remnants from a Lost Planet that was Destroyed Long Ago
A new study provides evidence of a so-called lost planet that was formed in the early days of the Solar…
“Monster Planet” Discovered, Makes Scientists Rethink Theories of Planetary Formation
The discovery of a Jupiter-sized planet around a red dwarf star has caused astronomers to rethink some of their theories…