How did our cosmic home—the solar system— fashion itself? This is a tale of billions of years. Put another way, begin with a huge whirling cloud of gas and dust. Consider that clouds whirling around ...

Tiny shavings from a single meteorite could completely overturn our understanding of how the solar system formed, after the space rock turned out to be older than expected. Previous research suggests ...

The ambitious mission to retrieve samples from asteroid Bennu and return them to Earth is paying off. Just as scientists had hoped, the asteroid is revealing details about the early days of our solar ...

Simulations reveal that Jupiter’s rapid growth disrupted the early solar system, creating rings where new planetesimals formed much later than expected. These late-forming bodies match the ages and ...

Most of our knowledge about the Solar System’s formation and evolution comes from the study of extraterrestrial rock samples called chondritic meteorites. These rocks, which are fragments of asteroids ...