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 ...

Are planets in the solar system that are closer to the Sun older than the ones further away? – Gavriel, age 10, Paducah, Kentucky A cloud of collapsing gas created our Sun, the first thing to form in ...

"The Solar Family" is an 11-minute educational film produced by Encyclopedia Britannica Films in 1936. It presents the evolution of the solar system through the lens of the planetesimal hypothesis, a ...

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 ...

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, ...

Asteroids, the enduring remnants of early Solar System formation, offer invaluable insights into the processes that shaped planetary evolution. Their diverse orbits, sizes and compositions not only ...

Scientists were able to see the moment when planets began to form around a star. Astronomers have witnessed the birth of a solar system beyond our own for the first time. An international team of ...