Researchers now appreciate that gas planets are more complex than first thought. New findings have implications for our ...

In the remote outer reaches of planetary systems, far beyond the orbit of known planets, enormous and mysterious worlds ...

The Protoplanetary Disk and Planet Formation. Approximately 4.6 billion years ago, our solar system originated from a vast ...

When a young star forms, a ring of gas and dust called a protoplanetary disk forms around it. Together, the star and the disk ...

A gas giant is a large planet that is not primarily composed of rock or other solid matter. Gas giants may have a rocky or metallic core—in fact, such a core is thought to be required for a gas ...

Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus may dominate the solar system, but their formation remains mysterious. A new model could account for these planets' rapid and efficient births.

But the ice giants have been visited only once — by Voyager 2 — over 30 years ago, so our data are limited. Despite all these questions, we do have some idea of what makes the outer planets ...

The smallest rogue planet Langeveld and his colleagues spotted, a gas giant about 5 times the mass of Jupiter (or 1,600 times the mass of Earth, if you prefer), is an important clue.

The planet is a type called a hot Jupiter, meaning it is a large gas giant that orbits very close to its star. So close, in fact, that a year there lasts less than four days and it has a ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Our solar system has a suite of eight planets—rocky Mars and Earth ...

In our solar system, ice giants like Neptune and Uranus, though less massive overall, contain more metals than the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, which are the largest planets, suggesting there ...