A dramatic life-and-death game of planetary survival is taking place inside a gigantic cloud of gas and dust 1,500 light-years from Earth, and the outcome could have far-reaching implications for the ...

Artistic illustration of the internal structure of a lava planet in a cold state, showing a day‑side magma ocean overlain by a mineral atmosphere. The arrows indicate the direction of heat transport ...

Astronomers have spotted a planetary system being conceived from the swirl of gas and dust surrounding a star — giving us an unprecedented, real-time look at how our solar system would’ve formed some ...

UC Davis researchers have dated the earliest step in the formation of the solar system — when microscopic interstellar dust coalesced into mountain-sized chunks of rock — to 4,568 million years ago, ...