Rowan University geology chair Harold Connolly, Jr., Ph.D., who serves as mission sample scientist for NASA’s OSIRIS-REx ...

International astronomers have for the first time witnessed the birth of a planetary system beyond Earth's sun that could one day resemble our own.

Astronomers have discovered the earliest seeds of rocky planets forming in the gas around a baby sun-like star, providing a precious peek into the dawn of our own solar system.

The star is surrounded by a protoplanetary disk, and this disk is the first evidence of debris condensing into what will eventually become planets and other objects. Observing this early phase of ...

Astronomers have discovered the earliest seeds of rocky planets forming in the gas around a baby sun-like star, providing a precious peek into the dawn of our own solar system.

This finding marks the first time a planetary system has been identified at such an early stage in its formation and opens a window to the past of our own solar system.

Astronomers See Planet Formation ‘Time Zero’ in an Alien Solar System Observations of a baby star may show the earliest stages of planet formation that astronomers have ever seen ...

Solar system formation Roughly 4.6 billion years ago, a dense cloud of gas and dust collapsed, forming a swirling disk that would eventually become our solar system.

Analysis of meteorite Northwest Africa 12264 suggests that we may have to alter our timeline of the early Solar System, potentially changing our models of planet formation. The rest of this ...

Billions of years ago, in the frozen edges of the solar system, a violent impact shaped one of space’s oddest pairs. Instead of a typical planet-moon setup, Pluto and Charon became a binary ...

The condensing of hot minerals was never detected before around other young stars, “so we didn’t know if it was a universal feature of planet formation or a weird feature of our solar system ...