Earth formed within such a precise “Goldilocks zone” for oxygen that a 5% change would have prevented life from emerging.

New research sheds light on the earliest days of the earth's formation and potentially calls into question some earlier assumptions in planetary science about the early years of rocky planets.

Planetary scientists have long debated where the material that formed Earth comes from. Despite its location in the inner solar system, they consider it likely that 6–40% of this material must have ...

About 4.6 billion years ago, the Solar System formed from a cloud of dust and gas collapsing in on itself due to gravity. The Sun, planets, and eventually Earth formed out of the cloud. But when did ...

A dramatic new video shows how Earth’s surface has changed over the last 1.8 billion years. The video reconstructs Earth’s surface evolution, and is presented as a relative plate motion model in a ...

Planetary scientists Paolo Sossi and Dan Bower from ETH Zurich have published a peer-reviewed study in Nature Astronomy arguing that Earth formed almost entirely from inner solar system material, with ...

Ars Technica has been separating the signal from the noise for over 25 years. With our unique combination of technical savvy and wide-ranging interest in the technological arts and sciences, Ars is ...

Researchers have made a new discovery that changes our understanding of Earth's early geological history, challenging beliefs about how our continents formed and when plate tectonics began. A study ...

The inner solar system may have formed differently from how we have long thought it must have. For decades, researchers have thought that the rocky planets formed from a single disc of dust and debris ...