Our parochial view of planets orbiting a central star — so familiar because it is the layout seen in the solar system — could be irrevocably shattered by new research that suggests giant, free-floating planets could form their own planetary systems. If true, that also means planetary systems may exist with no parent star. These rogue planetary systems would also …
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Astronomers have witnessed the birth of a planetary system that could one day resemble the solar system. The discovery offers scientists a proxy to study how our home planetary system formed around the sun around 4.6 billion years ago. The team was able to pinpoint the moment specks of material that will one day forge planets began to form around …
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When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun. | Credit: NASA Scientists have found that Uranus is emitting its own internal heat — even more than it receives from sunlight — and this discovery contradicts observations of the distant gas giant made by NASA’s …
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Scientists have found that Uranus is emitting its own internal heat — even more than it receives from sunlight — and this discovery contradicts observations of the distant gas giant made by NASA’s Voyager 2 probe nearly four decades ago. Scientists led by Xinyue Yang of the University of Houston analyzed decades of readings from spacecraft and computer models to …
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