When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Planetary scientists are split, oscillating between two main theories that explain the order in ...

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 ...

Scientists were able to see the moment when planets began to form around a star. Astronomers have witnessed the birth of a solar system beyond our own for the first time. An international team of ...

Protoplanetary disk. Figure from a computer simulation visualizing the formation of planets (https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12278 ). Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech. August 22, 2024, Mountain View, CA - An ...

Peering through a cosmic keyhole at distant baby star, astronomers may have opened a new window on the deep past of our own solar system. Weighing in at 0.6 solar mass, HOPS-315 should someday grow to ...

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 ...

A newborn planetary system is forming around HOPS-315, a protostar (one that recently formed) that sits some 1,300 light-years away in the constellation Orion the Hunter. This star isn’t in the ...