Our solar system and everything within it—including the Earth—will look very different when the sun dies.
While the upcoming total solar eclipse is a special moment to reflect on our place in the universe, scientists have been studying the birth of the sun and the formation of our solar system for a long time.
If you've ever been taught about how Earth orbits around the sun, you might well think our planet travels along an oval-shaped path that brings it much closer to the sun at some times of the year than at others. You'd have ...
About 4.5 billion years ago, a small planet smashed into the young Earth, flinging molten rock into space. Slowly, the debris coalesced, cooled and solidified, forming our moon. This scenario of how the Earth's moon came ...
Astronomers are pretty sure they know where the moon came from. In the early solar system, a Mars-sized object dubbed Theia smashed into Earth. This cataclysmic collision knocked a huge mass of material into orbit, which ...
Earth was long thought to be the only planet in our solar system with an ocean, but it is beginning to look as though there are underground oceans inside even the most surprising icy bodies.
How Earth and the other planets of the solar system formed and evolved over the eons is a hot question for planetary scientists like me. One of the best ways to find out is by looking at rocks from space.
Plants harness chlorophyll to capture sunlight and kickstart photosynthesis, a crucial process on our planet that converts luminous energy into chemical fuel while producing oxygen. This pivotal chemical energy is subsequently ...
Our star, the sun, on occasion joins forces with the moon to offer us Earthlings a spectacular solar eclipse—like the one that will be visible to parts of the United States, Mexico, and Canada on April 8.
In medieval and Renaissance society and culture, celestial events were not mere spectacles in the sky. Rather, they were omens, predictors of the future, and windows into the workings of the universe.
