This artist’s concept depicts one of the solar system’s inner planets slamming into Earth after being nudged on a collision course by a passing star. Such a world-shattering cataclysm is extremely ...

The formation of our solar system from a singular nebula raises an intriguing question: why did each planet develop with a ...

Mercury has long baffled astronomers because it defies much of what we know about planet formation. A new space mission arriving in 2026 might solve the mystery.

Roughly four and a half billion years ago the planet Theia slammed into Earth, destroying Theia, melting large fractions of Earth’s mantle and ejecting a huge debris disk that later formed the moon.

Emily Simpson has loved space since she was a 10-year-old kid celebrating her birthday at a planetarium. Now a recent Florida Tech graduate, she leaves with not only a dual degree in planetary science ...

"Jupiter didn't just become the biggest planet — it set the architecture for the whole inner solar system." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how ...

Since the Kepler Space Telescope began its prowl for exoplanets in 2009, it has uncovered a strange pattern among these alien ...

An object eight times the mass of Jupiter may have swooped around the sun, coming superclose to Mars' present-day orbit before shoving four of the solar system's planets onto a different course. When ...

Billions of years ago, while the solar system was still young, a massive object may have drifted into it. It's not a spaceship, but it is an alien visitor in its own right—a colossal interstellar body ...

This article was originally featured on The Conversation. 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 ...

Astronomers have directly spotted a rare young planet, WISPIT 2b, still forming within the gap of a dusty ringed disk around a star like our sun—something long theorized but never observed until now.