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 ...

Earth and Mars were formed from material that largely originated in the inner Solar System; only a few percent of the building blocks of these two planets originated beyond Jupiter’s orbit. A group of ...

Mercury has long baffled astronomers because it defies much of what we know about planet formation. A new space mission ...

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft captured this high-resolution enhanced color view of Pluto that is inserted beneath the Short Wave logo. The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the ...

You're probably familiar with how the solar system looks today. There are eight officially recognized planets located more or less on the same plane, orbiting the sun. But have you ever given a ...

Illustration comparing the planets of the Solar System and the Sun on the same scale. The planets are shown to scale relative to each other but their distances are not. From left to right the bodies ...

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, ...

A vast ring of rocky leftovers between Mars and Jupiter, the asteroid belt preserves clues to how the planets — and Earth ...

Fresh from finding potential biosignatures on the Bright Angel formation in Cheyava Falls, announced in September, NASA's Perseverance rover has discovered a highly unusual and out of place rock on ...

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS makes its closest Earth approach on Dec. 19, offering astronomers a rare chance to study a visitor from beyond the solar system ...

Though Pluto has formally been considered a dwarf planet for almost two decades, it still has many lessons left for planetary scientists —... Pluto isn’t a planet — but it gives us clues for how the ...