Planetary systems in the Milky Way galaxy tend to follow a particular pattern: rocky planets toward the center, closest to ...

"We would not have any way to go and actively deflect one right now," warns the scientist who led NASA's DART mission.

A new study focused on cryptic species—animals that look the same but are genetically different—found that they’re more widespread among vertebrates than we previously thought.

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

Since the 1990s, astronomers have found a handful of other dwarf planets in the belt, such as Eris and Sedna, along with ...

General relativity helps explain the lack of planets around tight binary stars by driving orbital resonances that eject or destroy close-in worlds. This process naturally creates a “desert” of ...

For life to develop on a planet, certain chemical elements are needed in sufficient quantities. Phosphorus and nitrogen are essential. Phosphorus is vital for the formation of DNA and RNA, which store ...

Gas giants are large planets mostly composed of helium and/or hydrogen. Although these planets have dense cores, they don't ...

Astronomers have seen the aftermath of two planetary pile-ups in the same turbulent star system — providing potential insights into how planets form 1. Observations from the early 2000s indicated that ...

Far from the Sun’s heat, orbiting the outer planets of the solar system, are moons with oceans of liquid water beneath their frozen surfaces. Keith Cooper finds out how planetary scientists are ...

The boundary of a solar system is not defined by planets, but by gravity. Beyond Pluto and the Kuiper Belt lies the Oort Cloud, extending up to a light year from the Sun and still considered part of ...

Earth has the perfect combination of a livable atmosphere and a protective magnetic field that prevents the Sun's harmful radiation and radioactive solar winds from damaging us, allowing us to live on ...