Two of the most mysterious planets in our solar system are Uranus and Neptune. These planets are also known as ice giants, due to their intermediate-mass and size which suggests an ice-rich ...

In this video segment adapted from NOVA, learn how the four rocky planets of the inner solar system formed.

How Did the Solar System Form? The tale of our sun may begin with another star: a predecessor whose fiery death brought about the birth of our solar system.

Standard planet-formation models have been unable to reconstruct the distributions of the Solar System's small, rocky planets and asteroids in the same simulation. A new analysis suggests that it ...

How Did the Solar System Form? The tale of our sun may begin with another star: a predecessor whose fiery death brought about the birth of our solar system.

Ever since scientists started looking at meteorites with microscopes, they’ve been puzzled—and fascinated—by what’s inside. Most meteorites are made of tiny beads of glass that date back to the ...

They noted that any larger asteroid formed very early on in the solar system would have been heated to high temperatures by the decay of large amounts of aluminum-26, a radioactive nuclide ...

How our planets were formedFormation of the solar system in two different planetary populations: the inner rocky planets formed earlier than the outer gas and ice giants. (Illustration: Mark A ...

Over four billion years ago, the solar system was a wild and dangerous place. Swirling clouds of dust and gas slowly turned ...

“The gas giants must have formed by 4 million years after the formation of the solar system,” Weiss says.