Astronomers have uncovered a distant planetary system that flips a long-standing rule of planet formation on its head. Around the small red dwarf star LHS 1903, scientists expected to find rocky ...

Gas giants are massive worlds made mostly of hydrogen and helium. They lack solid surfaces, and in our solar system, Jupiter ...

The fourth planet in the system is a rocky world, while the second and third ones are gas planets.

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

Scientists have identified a rocky outer planet in a system where a gas giant was expected. The discovery challenges ...

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

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

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: ...

We know that our Solar System is not the blueprint for all planetary systems out there. There are gas giant planets orbiting ...

General relativity helps explain the lack of planets around tight binary stars by driving orbital resonances that eject or destroy close-in worlds. This process naturally creates a “desert” of ...

A young star called V1298 Tau is giving astronomers a front-row seat to the birth of the galaxy’s most common planets. Four massive but extremely low-density worlds orbiting the star appear to be ...

For life to develop on a planet, certain chemical elements are needed in sufficient quantities. Phosphorus and nitrogen are essential. Phosphorus is vital for the formation of DNA and RNA, which store ...