Who’s in charge when an asteroid heads for Earth?
An asteroid crashing into Earth may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but experts warn it’s a real threat—and we may not be...
Thick clay layers on Mars may hold clues to ancient life
Mars may seem like a dry and lifeless planet today, but billions of years ago, it was much wetter—and possibly more welcoming to life.
A...
Have stellar flybys altered Earth’s climate in the past
If our Solar System seems stable, it's because our short lifespans make it seem that way.
Earth revolves, night follows day, the Moon moves through...
Scientists create Milky Way twins to unravel dark matter secrets
Scientists have created digital “twins” of our Milky Way galaxy to investigate one of the biggest puzzles in the universe: dark matter.
This invisible substance...
Cosmic clues reveal where the universe’s missing matter was hiding
For decades, scientists have been searching for something strange: a huge portion of the universe’s ordinary matter seemed to be missing.
Not dark matter, but...
Very massive stars expel more matter than previously thought
Very massive stars (VMSs), which typically has masses about 100 times that of our own Sun, are critical components in our understanding of the...
The mother of all meteor showers could threaten satellites
Shortly after astronomers detected asteroid 2024 YR4 on December 27, 2024, they realized it posed no threat to Earth.
But it still might impact the...
New NASA telescope could reveal hidden clues about dark matter
Next year, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is set to launch—and scientists believe it could change everything we know about dark matter, the...
Planet factories may be running on empty sooner than we thought
A new international study has revealed that planet-forming disks around young stars lose their gas much faster than their dust, challenging long-standing ideas about...
NASA’s Hubble uncovers a dusty mystery on Uranus’s moons
Scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope set out to study how Uranus’s magnetic field interacts with its largest moons—but instead, they stumbled upon a...