Key science: Stellar dynamics, N-body simulations, planetary orbital stability, and galactic gravitational potentials.

Over the course of more than two decades, researchers at the University of Bern have developed the so-called "Bern model," a suite of computer programs that can numerically simulate the formation of ...

Young exoplanets provide vital insights into the early dynamical and atmospheric evolution of planetary systems. Many multi-planet systems younger than 100 Myr exhibit mean-motion resonances, probably ...

A village in Kent is home to what is thought to be the world's largest scale model of the solar system and beyond, created to ...

Planets are bodies that orbit a star and have sufficient gravitational mass that they form themselves into roughly spherical shapes that, in turn, exert gravitational force on smaller objects around ...

For decades, the solar system set the template: small rocky planets close to the star, gas giants farther out, beyond a boundary called the snow line where icy grains help cores grow fast enough to ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The search for life beyond ...

Rocky planets like our Earth may be far more common than previously thought, according to new research published in the journal Science Advances. It suggests that when our solar system formed, a ...

More than one-third of the giant planet systems recently detected outside our solar system may harbor Earth- like planets covered in deep global oceans that offer abundant potential for life, ...

In the remote outer reaches of planetary systems, far beyond the orbit of known planets, enormous and mysterious worlds silently loop around their stars. Some drift as far as 10,000 times the distance ...

Planets form and obtain their compositions from the leftover material present in protoplanetary disks of dust and gas surrounding young stars. The chemical make-up of a disk influences every aspect of ...