The Sun is the oldest body in our Solar System — and since everything in our system revolves around it, that obviously makes perfect sense — springing to life somewhere around 4.6 billion years ago. The planets formed millions of years later from the material that was orbiting the star, and because of this it’s …
Planetary systems aren’t just born overnight. When stars form and begin pulling debris into their orbit, some of that material eventually clumps up into fledgling planets, and the gravity of those bodies pulls down more and more material which ultimately determines how large a would-be planet could be. But life isn’t easy for young planets, …
Our Solar System is a pretty calm place these days, all things considered, but that wasn’t always the case. In the period when the planets were still forming, collisions between various large bodies were common, and they ultimately helped shape the system that we see today. New research shows that Uranus, a chilly, hostile planet …
Planet formation isn’t exactly the kind of thing that happens in the blink of an eye. New worlds form over extremely long stretches of time, at least on a human scale. They slowly build up mass from the dust and debris nearest to them, eventually forming the spherical shape we’re all familiar with. Despite the …
Ever walk down the street on a particularly windy day and feel yourself being pushed along? The planet Venus knows all about that. Researchers studying the nearby planet have discovered this truly bizarre phenomenon, calculating that the planet’s thick atmosphere and intense wind actually causes the planet’s rotation to speed up by a measurable amount. …
Mankind has managed to learn a lot about our Solar System and the planets that reside in it simply by gazing into the night sky, but finding evidence of planets that no longer exist is obviously a much more difficult challenge. A team of scientists now believes they’ve done just that thanks to the shattered …
When it comes to maps, Google has already conquered Earth. Whether you need a bird’s eye view of your neighborhood or a street-level glimpse at a storefront half the world away, Google can deliver it in seconds. So it’s no wonder that after doing pretty much everything it possibly can to map our home planet, …
At a press conference today, a Dutch-led international research team has announced the discovery of several Earth-sized exoplanets orbiting a star 40 light-years away. Three of those planets are in the habitable zone where conditions would be amenable to liquid water, raising the possibility that humans — or some other life form — could potentially inhabit …
