Space & Future
Scientists explore the surface of a super-Earth 48 light-years away
Astronomers have taken an exciting step forward in understanding planets beyond our solar system by studying not just their atmospheres, but their actual surfaces.
Using...
How can this tiny world have an atmosphere? Scientists are stunned
Far beyond Neptune, in one of the coldest and darkest regions of our solar system, astronomers have discovered something unexpected: a small icy object...
What happens when a star gets too close to a black hole
Supermassive black holes are among the most enigmatic objects in the universe.
They typically weigh millions or even billions of times the mass of the...
Astronomers finally crack the mass mystery of Orion’s hidden young stars
A star’s mass shapes everything about its life, from how bright it shines to how it eventually dies.
Small stars like our Sun burn slowly...
Astronomers discover missing planets around the galaxy’s most common stars
Astronomers have discovered something surprising about planets beyond our solar system.
Even though planets are incredibly common—scientists now estimate there is at least one planet...
Why one side of the Milky Way is hotter than the other
Scientists have discovered a surprising reason why one side of our galaxy is warmer than the other, and the explanation is something you might...
How the Milky Way’s smallest neighbors reveal the early universe
Astronomers have long been fascinated by tiny galaxies that orbit the Milky Way.
These faint and fragile systems, known as ultra-faint dwarf galaxies, are often...
Binary stars form lots of exoplanets, but many of them are ejected as rogue...
Astronomers don't have to work hard to find binary stars in the Milky Way.
They're common, even abundant. For a long time, they thought that...
Scientists finally discover the true edge of the Milky Way
For many years, astronomers have wondered where the Milky Way truly “ends.” Unlike a solid object, our galaxy does not have a clear boundary.
Its...
Potential signs of life on distant planets sound exciting, but confirmation can take years
Astronomers can use telescopes to find specific molecules in the atmospheres of neighboring planets, in nebulae—clouds of interstellar dust and gas—hundreds or thousands of...
Astronomers find the edge of the Milky Way’s star-forming disc
Where exactly is the edge of the Milky Way?
That question is harder to answer than one might expect. Since we’re inside of the galaxy...
Forget our Sun—Planets might form more easily around double stars
For a long time, scientists believed that having two stars in one system would make it difficult for planets to form.
The strong gravitational pull...
Deep Space
What sparked life on Earth? Perhaps bolts from the blue
Lightning strikes — perhaps a quintillion of them, occurring over a billion years — may have provided sparks of life for the early Earth.
A...
Astronomers find a water world planet with deep oceans in the habitable zone
In the search for extrasolar planets, astronomers and astrobiologists generally pursue a policy of “follow the water.”
This comes down to searching for planets that...
How close is too close to a Kilonova
Cataclysmic events happen in the Universe all the time. Black hole mergers, supernovae, gamma-ray bursts, and a whole host of others.
Most of them happen...
Scientists on the hunt for alien atmospheres: A step toward finding extraterrestrial life
Astronomer Sebastian Zieba, who graduated with honors from Leiden University, is on an exciting mission to find atmospheres around planets outside our solar system.
Using...
Gas on Saturn’s moon Enceladus could be ‘free lunch’ for alien life
The subsurface ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus probably has higher than previously known concentrations of carbon dioxide and hydrogen and a more Earthlike pH...