We know that our Solar System is not the blueprint for all planetary systems out there. There are gas giant planets orbiting closer to their stars than Mercury, and rocky worlds much larger than Earth ...

Artist impression of the planetary system with four planets,around a small red star,called LHS1903. Caption: Astronomers have long thought solar systems follow a simple pattern similar to our own: ...

A closer look at the planets around a star called LHS 1903 may just flip our understanding of how planetary systems form.

Astronomers have found a distant world that challenges planetary formation theory, with a rocky planet where gas giants should be.

A newly studied solar system breaks the usual planet pattern, raising fresh questions about how rocky and gas planets form.

Gas giants possibly developed slowly in the solar system. They developed cores layer by layer within a disk of ice and dust ...

A planetary system 116 light-years from Earth has a peculiar pattern. It could flip the script on how planets form, scientists say.

In the swirling clouds of gas and dust that surround newborn stars, planets begin to form. These planet-forming disks are rich with clues about how worlds like Earth come to be. Until now, scientists ...

Gas giants are large planets mostly composed of helium and/or hydrogen. Although these planets have dense cores, they don't ...

An unmanned spacecraft with ties to Tucson is on track to coast around the sun this winter before sling-shotting by Mars on its way to a rendezvous with an asteroid and a dwarf planet. NASA officials ...

How did a planet this big form around a star this small? An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the University of Liège and collaborators in UK, Chile, the USA, and Europe, ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A surprising study from Stockholm University finds high levels of carbon dioxide—rather than water—in a planet-forming disk, ...