Explore the story of our solar system’s formation, tracing how a vast cloud of gas and dust collapsed under gravity, collisions, and angular momentum to create a thin, spinning protolanetary disc.

In the vast calm of the solar system, planetary orbits often appear orderly, stable, and insulated from the broader mechanics of the galaxy. Earth circles the Sun with regularity. The outer planets ...

Studying the orbits of thousands of exoplanets shows that large planets tend to have elliptical orbits, while smaller planets tend to have more circular orbits. This split coincides with several other ...

The coincidence of trends in abundance, metallicity and eccentricity points to two distinct pathways for forming small and large planets. "To see a transition in the eccentricities of the orbits at ...