A planetary system 116 light-years from Earth has a peculiar pattern. It could flip the script on how planets form, scientists say.

And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Sometimes, if the night is dark and clear enough, you can look up and see the Milky Way in its arc across the sky.

Astronomers have found a distant world that challenges planetary formation theory, with a rocky planet where gas giants should be.

Artist impression of the planetary system with four planets,around a small red star,called LHS1903. Caption: Astronomers have long thought solar systems follow a simple pattern similar to our own: ...

Explore the story of our solar system’s formation, tracing how a vast cloud of gas and dust collapsed under gravity, collisions, and angular momentum to create a thin, spinning protolanetary disc.

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 ...

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 ...

A newly studied solar system breaks the usual planet pattern, raising fresh questions about how rocky and gas planets form.

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 ...