"During the early solar system's game of cosmic billiards, Earth was struck by a neighbor,” said Dauphas. “It was a lucky shot. Without the moon's steadying influence on our planet's tilt, the climate ...

When a meteor streaks across the sky, it's not just beautiful. It's nature's way of delivering a time capsule to Earth.

Our Solar System is believed to have formed from a cloud of gas and dust, the so-called solar nebula, which began to condense on itself gravitationally ~ 4.6 billion years ago. As this cloud ...

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 ...

Moon’s precursor planet, Theia, disappeared billions ago, leaving scientists no direct chemical evidence to support the hypothesis. Now a team of astromers in France, Germany and the United States ...

Roughly four and a half billion years ago the planet Theia slammed into Earth, destroying Theia, melting large fractions of Earth’s mantle and ejecting a huge debris disk that later formed the moon.

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 ...

Theia, the world that helped form the Moon, came from the Solar System. Chemical clues in Earth and Moon rocks reveal this close origin.

And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. Sometimes, if the night is dark and clear enough, you can look up and see the Milky Way in its arc across the sky.

The Sun's formation caused temperature differences in the surrounding disk of gas and dust. Inner, hotter regions formed rocky planets from less volatile elements. Outer, colder regions allowed ...

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, ...