How did our cosmic home—the solar system— fashion itself? This is a tale of billions of years. Put another way, begin with a huge whirling cloud of gas and dust. Consider that clouds whirling around ...

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 ...

Are planets in the solar system that are closer to the Sun older than the ones further away? – Gavriel, age 10, Paducah, Kentucky A cloud of collapsing gas created our Sun, the first thing to form in ...

To better understand why the planets have variable compositions, we have to first understand the process of how stars form. While the composition of gas and dust in a precursor molecular cloud is ...

There are a couple of ways that scientists can date planets, so which planets formed first in our solar system? When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s ...

This is HOPS-315, a baby star where astronomers have observed evidence for the earliest stages of planet formation. The image was taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). In ...