On a frigid orbit beyond Neptune, some of the solar system’s smallest worlds project a strange silhouette. Two rounded lobes, pressed together with a narrow “neck,” like a snowman that never melted.

Earth could have lost anywhere between ten and 60 per cent of its atmosphere in the collision that is thought to have formed the Moon. New research led by Durham University, UK, shows how the extent ...

The giant impacts that dominate late stages of planet formation have a wide range of consequences for young planets and their atmospheres, according to new research. Research led by Durham University ...

Researchers simulated how gravitational collapse forms two-lobed contact binaries in the Kuiper Belt without destructive ...

Astronomers have puzzled for years over a strange pattern in the outer solar system. A surprising number of icy bodies far beyond Neptune resemble snowmen, made of two rounded lobes stuck together.

If Titan formed from a merger, the researchers found, its eccentric orbit could destabilize smaller moons closer to Saturn, ...

How did Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, form? This is what a recent study published in Nature Geoscience hopes to address as an international team of researchers led by the University of Arizona ...

A massive upheaval in the Saturnian system could have also led to the moon Hyperion.

The early years of our solar system were a period of unimaginable chaos and violence, a gravitational free-for-all where colliding planetary embryos competed for survival. In this tumultuous ...

Hit-and-run collisions between embryonic planets during a critical period in the early history of the Solar System may account for some previously unexplained properties of planets, asteroids, and ...