As planetary systems evolve, gravitational interactions between planets can fling some of them into eccentric elliptical orbits around the host star, or even out of the system altogether. Smaller ...

Gravity not only maintains the stability of these orbits but also influences phenomena like tides on Earth, caused by the moon's gravitational pull. The paper, authored by David Jewitt from the ...

A massive interstellar object passing through our solar system during its formative years likely altered the orbits of planets into trajectories observed today, a new study says. Interactions with ...

A newly discovered object orbiting far beyond Neptune has its closest approach to the Sun pointed in the opposite direction from every other known body like it, weakening one of the central ...

Star and planet formation has largely been considered separate, sequential processes. But in a new study, scientists at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) have modeled a different scenario where ...

A comet born around a distant star is now tearing through our solar system at roughly 150,000 miles per hour, and astronomers ...

EVANSTON, Ill. — Except for the fact that we call it home, for centuries astronomers didn’t have any particular reason to believe that our solar system was anything special in the universe. But, ...

Planets orbit their parent stars while separated by enormous distances – in our solar system, planets are like grains of sand in a region the size of a football field. The time that planets take to ...