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.

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 ...

Everything we know about the formation of solar systems might be wrong, says University of Florida astronomy professor Jian Ge and his postdoc, Bo Ma. They’ve discovered the first “binary-binary” – ...

When a meteor streaks across the sky, it's not just beautiful. It's nature's way of delivering a time capsule to Earth. Contained within are hints about the very beginning of the solar system and how ...

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, ...

ESS2.C: The Roles of Water in Earth’s Surface Processes Water is found in the ocean, rivers, lakes, and ponds. Water exists as solid ice and in liquid form. ESS2.A: Earth Materials and Systems (3-5) ...

About 4.6 billion years ago, a celestial cloud collapsed, paving the way for our solar system to form. Then, a nebula with strong gravitational pull took shape, kick-starting the birth of the sun. But ...

Across the galaxy, astronomers now see that planetary systems fall into four broad classes, and our own solar system, part of the rare Ordered group, is only one of them. At the same time, discoveries ...

Illustration comparing the planets of the Solar System and the Sun on the same scale. The planets are shown to scale relative to each other but their distances are not. From left to right the bodies ...