Nearly 4.5 million years ago, two enormous, blazing stars swung close to the solar system. They did not touch the sun, but they came close enough to leave a permanent mark on the thin mist of gas that ...
The Sun is the engine of life on Earth. It provides heat, light, and the energy that drives every ecosystem on the planet.
Earth may owe some of its properties to a nearby star that blew up just as the solar system was forming. This pattern, which saw a supernova bubble envelop the sun and shower it with cosmic rays, may ...
The standard story of the origin of our solar system has gone like this: 4.6 billion years ago, a giant cloud of dust hung frozen in space. Then the explosion of a nearby star caused part of that dust ...
The outer solar system once seemed like a quiet backwater. But a glut of tiny, strange moons with unruly orbits are coming into view, revealing hints of a surprising past – and the origin of Saturn's ...