Approximately 4.5 billion years ago, a cold cloud of gas and dust buried deep in one of the Milky Way galaxy’s spiral arms started to collapse. From there, gravity worked its magic. The cloud began to ...

From a shrinking Mercury to Venus’s runaway greenhouse nightmare, the inner solar system is a story of extremes. This video ...

Earth and Mars were formed from material that largely originated in the inner Solar System; only a few percent of the building blocks of these two planets originated beyond Jupiter’s orbit. A group of ...

Alfredo has a PhD in Astrophysics and a Master's in Quantum Fields and Fundamental Forces from Imperial College London. Alfredo has a PhD in Astrophysics and a Master's in Quantum Fields and ...

New research confirms Earth formed almost entirely from material in the inner Solar System, with Jupiter acting as a barrier to outer Solar System debris. Isotopic analysis of meteorites shows a close ...

The chemical composition of meteorites and asteroids acts as a kind of fingerprint, providing information about the origin of the building materials that formed the Earth. Using a new analysis of ...

"We found that some comets in the inner Oort cloud form a long-lasting spiral structure." When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Spirals ...

An "interstellar object" is speeding toward the inner solar system, where Earth is located, astronomers have confirmed. The object -- likely a comet -- was first detected in data collected between by ...

Unfortunately, this book can't be printed from the OpenBook. If you need to print pages from this book, we recommend downloading it as a PDF. Visit NAP.edu/10766 to get more information about this ...