In a groundbreaking new study, researchers have unveiled the existence of a “cosmic highway”—a pathway of interstellar material from the Alpha Centauri system that may already be linking our solar ...

For centuries, astronomers have sought to understand the formation and evolution of the solar system and the dynamics that govern it. In particular, there is the long-standing question of whether or ...

A group of astronomers from the US, Europe, Chile and South Africa have determined that 70,000 years ago a recently discovered dim star is likely to have passed through the solar system’s distant ...

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 ...

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 Gaia space telescope has measured the acceleration of the Solar System when it orbits the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The Solar System motion relative to the stars agrees with the results by ...

In the distant future—about six billion or seven billion years hence—the sun will start to die, swelling up into a bloated red giant. In a span of several hundred million years it will blow away its ...

Bad news, earthlings. Computer simulations of the solar system’s future reveal a new risk facing us all: The gravitational tug of a passing star could either cause another planet to smack into Earth ...