The movements of more than 300 000 stars surveyed by ESA's Gaia satellite reveal that rare close encounters with our sun might disturb the cloud of comets at the far reaches of our solar system, sending some towards Earth ...
Comets that take more than 200 years to make one revolution around the sun are notoriously difficult to study. Because they spend most of their time far from our area of the solar system, many "long-period comets" will never ...
In our solar system, an asteroid orbits the sun in the opposite direction to the planets. Asteroid 2015 BZ509, also known as Bee-Zed, takes 12 years to make one complete orbit around the sun. This is the same orbital period ...
Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and Tesla, has released new details of his vision to colonise parts of the solar system, including Mars, Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Enceladus. His gung ho plans – designed to ...
Ever since enthusiasm started growing over the possibility that there could be a ninth major planet orbiting the sun beyond Neptune, astronomers have been busy hunting it. One group is investigating four new moving objects ...
By examining the atomic carbon line from two young star systems—49 Ceti and Beta Pictoris—researchers had found atomic carbon in the disk, the first time this observation has been made at sub-millimeter wavelength, hinting ...
A trip past the sun may have selectively altered the production of one form of water in a comet - an effect not seen by astronomers before, a new NASA study suggests.
The dynamical properties of these asteroids, observed spectroscopiccally for the first time using the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS, suggest a possible common origin and give a clue to the existence of a planet beyond Pluto, the ...
If you ask yourself what the biggest threat to human existence is you'd probably think of nuclear war, global warming or a large-scale pandemic disease. But assuming we can overcome such challenges, are we really safe?
Establishing a sustained human presence somewhere other than Earth is a vital part of humanity's future, no matter what. We know that Earth won't last forever. We don't know exactly which one of the many threats that Earth ...
