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 ...

Scientists at the Simulation and Data Lab Astronomy and Astrophysics at Forschungszentrum Jülich have carried out more than 3,000 computer simulations to find the cause of the unusual orbits of the ...

Astronomers have detected about 6,100 planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, since the 1990s. All four in the newly observed system orbit closer to the star than our solar system’s ...

Studying the orbits of thousands of exoplanets shows that large planets tend to have elliptical orbits, while smaller planets tend to have more circular orbits. This split coincides with several other ...

Though our solar system and the movement of its planets appear relatively sedate, there are many things that could upset the balance. Anything with enough mass that got close enough could disrupt ...

In theory, it could happen – one of the very first solutions to the three-body problem was this scenario. But it is very unlikely to be stable over time. You need the stars to have near equal mass and ...