HR 8799, located 129 light-years away, is home to a rare group of super-Jupiters, gas giants that are much larger than our own Jupiter. These planets, orbiting far from their star, present a unique ...

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

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 ...

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 ...

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

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

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 ...

Dr. Jane Huang's research on planet formation in harsh environments, particularly within the Sigma Orionis cluster, offers surprising insights into the universality of planet formation. In a recent ...

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 ...

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 ...

The wonders of life on Earth are endless, but all that may never have come to pass were it not for the planet having the perfect amount of oxygen at birth.