I've been trying to explain quantum physics, forces, relativity, and space-time to my kid and we had a question that I'm finding difficult to find a solid answer to. Background you can skip if you ...

When a star is young, it is often still surrounded by a primordial rotating disk of gas and dust, from which planets can form. Astronomers like to find such disks because they might be able to catch ...

Planets usually stay close to their host stars, tracing steady paths shaped by gravity. Yet some planets break free and drift alone through the Milky Way. Astronomers call these objects free-floating ...

How do rogue planetary-mass objects -- celestial bodies with masses between stars and planets -- form? An international team of astronomers has used advanced simulations to show that these enigmatic ...