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 ...

"During the early solar system's game of cosmic billiards, Earth was struck by a neighbor,” said Dauphas. “It was a lucky shot. Without the moon's steadying influence on our planet's tilt, the climate ...

Astronomers might have found evidence of a structure located farbeyond Neptune, potentially giving us clues about the solar system’s primordial past. This discovery involves a dense concentration of ...

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 ...

About 4.5 billion years ago, a colossal impact between the young Earth and a mysterious planetary body called Theia changed everything—reshaping Earth, forming the Moon, and scattering clues across ...

A new study of Apollo lunar rocks suggests that the moon is older than anyone believed. The moon, researchers now say, likely formed about 50 million years after the solar system did, which is much ...

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like ...

For the first time, international researchers have pinpointed the moment when planets began to form around a star beyond the sun. Using the ALMA telescope, in which the European Southern Observatory ...

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Christopher Palma, Penn State and Lucas Brefka, Penn State (THE CONVERSATION) ...