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As the solar system was developing, the giant planets (Jupiter and Saturn) formed very early, and as they grew, they migrated both closer to and further away from the sun to stay in gravitationally stable orbits. The gravitational effect of these massive objects caused immense reshuffling of other planetary bodies that were forming at the time, meaning that the current locations of many planetary bodies in our solar system are not where they originally formed. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists set out to reconstruct these original formation locations by studying the isotopic compositions of different groups of meteorites that...

The path of true love never runs smooth, it is said. Especially on Valentine's Day. And for young planets, that path turns out to be an inward-moving annulus. A simulation by scientists in France and USA appears to show that Jupiter once strayed to flirt with the inner Solar System, before being "jilted" and sent back to its present-day position. The effect of this was to form the inner planets, according to the theory, which comes up with mass ratios for Earth and Mars similar to that observed today and which, remarkably, also accurately depicts the Asteroid Belt. If the...

New interpretations of the Biblical Flood story