Infant planets are ravenous little blighters that quickly devour what remains of the star-circling gas and dust clouds in which they form. The gas in these protoplanetary disks disappears rapidly, ...

Thanks to the discovery of thousands of exoplanets to date, we know that planets bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune orbit most stars. Oddly, our sun lacks such a planet. That's been a source ...

CONFIDENCE IN HAPPENING YESTERDAY. NEW MEXICO STATE UNIVERSITY ASTRONOMER RECENTLY SAW SOMETHING UNUSUAL DURING HIS RESEARCH OF SPACE, AND IT COULD HELP US UNDERSTAND HOW PLANETS FORM. VLADIMIR LYRA ...

How did a planet this big form around a star this small? An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the University of Liège and collaborators in UK, Chile, the USA, and Europe, ...

Five new exoplanets have been discovered—each of them so young, they are still growing. The baby planets were discovered by researchers in the midst of an international planet hunt, using a new ...

It was almost 100 years ago that Clyde W. Tombaugh discovered Pluto. That was the last planet found until 1992, when humans found another one. But this new planet wasn't in our solar system—it was ...

When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Planetary scientists are split, oscillating between two main theories that explain the order in ...

Researchers have discovered more than 6,000 exoplanets in our Milky Way. Of these, the sub-Neptune class, which are smaller than Neptune and more massive than Earth, are the most common. These planets ...

"The extraordinary results are an essential step toward understanding the initial conditions that lead to the formation of Earth-like planets." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn ...