For eons, our solar system has been a relatively stable environment, with planets orbiting the Sun in predictable paths. However, the vastness of space means that occasionally, other stars come close ...

Our solar system might still bear the scars from an extremely close shave with an alien star. Such an encounter – the closest pass we know of – would have shaken up objects on the outskirts and might ...

A newly studied solar system breaks the usual planet pattern, raising fresh questions about how rocky and gas planets form.

There’s a bit of a paradox about our galaxy: it’s both jam-packed with stars and cavernously empty. The Milky Way is crowded in the sense that it holds hundreds of billions of stars, as well as ...