Silicon monoxide gas detected by JWST signals the sublimation and recondensation of silicate dust into crystalline minerals. These minerals combine into pebbles, the earliest building blocks of ...

Astronomers have found a debris disk around a sun-like star that may be forming or has formed its terrestrial planets. The disk – a probable analog to our asteroid belt – may have begun a solar-system ...

Southwest Research Institute has collaborated with Yale University to summarize the scientific community's notable progress in advancing the understanding of the formation and evolution of the inner ...

Late-stage planetary collisions reshaped Earth and its neighboring planets, delivering water, altering their atmospheres, and influencing their tectonics. New findings suggest these violent impacts ...

A long-ago reshuffling of the giant planets in our solar system may have been instrumental in giving Earth its moon. For decades, planetary scientists have hypothesized that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus ...

A new SwRI-led paper highlights the scientific progress made in understanding the evolution of terrestrial planets, including the effects of late large impacts on pre-existing modes of tectonics. For ...

How do terrestrial planets like Earth form and evolve to enable life to exist? This is what a recent study published in Nature hopes to address as a pair of scientists from the Southwest Research ...