New work offers fresh evidence supporting the supernova shock wave theory of our solar system’s origin. According to one longstanding theory, our Solar System’s formation was triggered by a shock wave ...

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 ...

It’s one of the most enduring ideas about the formation of our solar system: Earth collided with a Mars-sized object, Theia, and the debris from this cosmic crash eventually became the moon. But a new ...

When it comes to explaining how planets are formed, the protoplanetary hypothesis is the most widely accepted explanation. In simple terms, the donut-shaped disc of dust and gas around a star forms ...

Michigan State University’s Seth Jacobson and colleagues in China and France have unveiled a new theory that could help solve a galactic mystery of how our solar system evolved. Specifically, how did ...

Recent simulations and research have unveiled a fascinating new insight into the history of the solar system’s terrestrial planets. For years, scientists speculated about how the rocky planets—Earth, ...

Illustration comparing the planets of the Solar System and the Sun on the same scale. The planets are shown to scale relative to each other but their distances are not. From left to right the bodies ...