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 ...
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 ...
The solar system is 4.54 billion years old, based on rock dating. Gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) likely formed first. Ice giants (Uranus and Neptune) probably formed next. Rocky planets formed last, ...
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 ...
New studies offer a clearer picture of how the outer solar system formed and evolved based on analyses of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) and centaurs. The findings reveal the distribution of ices in ...
About 4.6 billion years ago, our corner of space was basically just a boring cloud of gas and dust floating around, and then something amazing happened that turned this mess into the planets, moons, ...
Discovery of oxygen raises new questions about how solar system formed. In this undated photo, Rosetta finds oxygen on comet 67P. ESA/Rosetta/NavCam – CC BY-SA IGO 3.0 — -- The European Space ...
You're probably familiar with how the solar system looks today. There are eight officially recognized planets located more or less on the same plane, orbiting the sun. But have you ever given a ...
A vast ring of rocky leftovers between Mars and Jupiter, the asteroid belt preserves clues to how the planets — and Earth ...
Though Pluto has formally been considered a dwarf planet for almost two decades, it still has many lessons left for planetary scientists —... Pluto isn’t a planet — but it gives us clues for how the ...