The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa2 mission returned uncontaminated primitive asteroid samples to Earth. A comprehensive analysis of 16 particles from the asteroid Ryugu revealed many ...

New work from Carnegie’s Alan Boss and Sandra Keiser provides surprising new details about the trigger that may have started the earliest phases of planet formation in our solar system. It is ...

Scientists from MIT and their colleagues have estimated the lifetime of the solar nebula — a key stage during which much of the solar system evolution took shape. This new estimate suggests that the ...

The system has provided a rich source of information on planet formation and evolution in a young solar system. Researchers used a variety of tools to compile radial velocity and transit timing ...

A new explanation for the solar system's radioactive elements suggests Earth-like planets might be found orbiting up to 50 ...

Apollo samples provide evidence: Researchers analyzed Moon rocks brought back by the Apollo missions and, for the first time, ...

For every rule in the cosmos, there is a spectacular exception. While most planets orbit in a neat plane, Pluto tumbles at a ...

The solar system is 4.54 billion years old, based on rock dating. Gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) likely formed first. Ice giants (Uranus and Neptune) probably formed next. Rocky planets formed last, ...

Super-Earths and sub-Neptunes, planets with sizes between Earth and Neptune, constitute approximately one-third of known exoplanets but are absent in our solar system. Their prevalence elsewhere and ...

Mercury is the innermost and smallest of the eight major planets in our Solar System, orbiting closest to the Sun. Though only slightly larger than Earth’s Moon, Mercury endures some of the most ...