Largest rocky world found

We thought we understood how big rocky planets can get. But most of our understanding of planetary formation and solar system development has come from direct observation of our own solar system. We simply couldn't see any ...

Scientists predict that rocky planets formed from 'pebbles'

Using a new process in planetary formation modeling, where planets grow from tiny bodies called "pebbles," Southwest Research Institute scientists can explain why Mars is so much smaller than Earth. This same process also ...

Solar System formation don't mean a thing without that spin

New work from Carnegie's Alan Boss and Sandra Keiser provides surprising new details about the trigger that may have started the earliest phases of planet formation in our solar system. It is published by The Astrophysical ...

What was here before the solar system?

The solar system is old. Like, dial-up-fax-machine-old. 4.6 billion years to be specific. The solar system has nothing on the universe. It's been around for 13.8 billion years, give or take a few hundred million. That means ...

How comets were assembled

Rosetta's target "Chury" and other comets observed by space missions show common evidence of layered structures and bi-lobed shapes. With 3D computer simulations Martin Jutzi of PlanetS at the University of Bern was able ...

The role of "planet traps" in solar system formation

A team from the Astrophysics, Instrumentation and Modelling laboratory at Paris-Saclay (AIM – CNRS/CEA/Université Paris Diderot) has developed a new model that represents the evolution of protoplanetary disks over millions ...

Complex organic molecules discovered in infant star system

For the first time, astronomers have detected the presence of complex organic molecules, the building blocks of life, in a protoplanetary disk surrounding a young star, suggesting once again that the conditions that spawned ...

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