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 ...

Tiny life forms tucked into debris from an asteroid hit could catapult to other planets—including Earth—and survive, a new ...

A planet circling at a sharp 90-degree angle to the orbits of its two host stars has now been confirmed. This discovery challenges long-standing ideas about how planets form and orbit in the cosmos.

New research uses laboratory experiments to demonstrate that water is naturally created during the planet formation process. By squeezing and heating planetary analog materials between the tips of two ...

You’ve probably watched this sort of science-fiction scene more than once: some stalwart starship captain and their crew are fleeing from aliens/escaping a supernova/running out of fuel and are ...

Researchers have discovered more than 6,000 exoplanets in our Milky Way. Of these, the sub-Neptune class, which are smaller than Neptune and more massive than Earth, are the most common. These planets ...

Astronomers studying a dim red dwarf star called LHS 1903 have found a four-planet system with an architecture that defies the standard rules of how rocky worlds take shape. The outermost planet in ...

Stronger links between researchers who work on Earth’s and other planets’ atmospheres, and between the experimental, modelling and observational communities, will help to interpret the astronomical ...