A ring of icy rocks orbiting our sun just beyond Neptune may give us a glimpse of how Neptune—and other objects in the outskirts of our solar system—were formed.
Before planets form around a young star, the protosolar disk is populated with innumerable planetesimals. Over time, these planetesimals combine to form planets, and the core accretion theory explains how that happens. But ...
The Kuiper Belt, the vast region at the edge of our solar system populated by countless icy objects, is a treasure trove of scientific discoveries. The detection and characterization of Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), sometimes ...
In 1960, Freeman Dyson proposed how advanced civilizations could create megastructures that enclosed their system, allowing them to harness all of their star's energy and multiplying the habitable space they could occupy. ...
Saturn is best known for two things: its iconic ring structures and its large system of natural satellites. Currently, 146 moons and moonlets have been discovered orbiting the ringed giant, 24 of which are regular satellites. ...
A pair of astrophysicists, one with Kindai University, the other the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, both in Japan, have found possible evidence of an Earth-like planet residing in the Kuiper Belt. In their paper ...
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has named an asteroid after Pedro Machado, astrophysicist at Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences (IA), at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon (Portugal). ...
,We all used to think there were nine planets. But in 2006, the solar system was left with only eight planets, when Pluto was no longer classified as such. But is it still possible there is a planet out there beyond Neptune—possibly ...
Asteroids sharing their orbits with the planet Neptune have been observed to exist in a broad spectrum of red color, implying the existence of two populations of asteroids in the region, according to a new study by an international ...
Scientists have discovered a new ring system around a dwarf planet on the edge of the solar system. The ring system orbits much further out than is typical for other ring systems, calling into question current theories of ...
