While the upcoming total solar eclipse is a special moment to reflect on our place in the universe, scientists have been studying the birth of the sun and the formation of our solar system for a long ...

Our Sun is actually a cosmic refugee. Around 4.6 billion years ago, it first ignited in a hostile, radiation-blasted neighborhood 10,000 light-years closer to the Milky Way’s center than it is now.

For billions of years before reaching its current location, the Sun may have slowly travelled as part of a large group, or “wave,” of stars drifting out from the inner parts of the Milky Way. This ...

A tiny meteorite is rewriting what scientists thought they knew about the origins of our solar system. New evidence found in shavings from a meteorite known as Northwest Africa 12264 — a 50-gram (1.8 ...

This story comes from our special January 2021 issue, “The Beginning and the End of the Universe.” Click here to purchase the full issue. Some 4.6 billion years ago, our Sun was born from a cloud of ...

Around 4.6 billion years ago, a young, hot star was born. The Sun formed from a cloud of gas and dust, and over time planetary bodies, including Earth and Mars, came to be. It’s unlikely that ...

The Earth formed over 4.6 billion years ago out of a mixture of dust and gas around the young sun. It grew larger thanks to countless collisions between dust particles, asteroids, and other growing ...