What’s the most effective way to explore our nearest stars
It was 1903 that the Wright brothers made the first successful self-propelled flight.
Launching themselves to history, they set the foundations for transatlantic flights, supersonic...
The giant planets migrated between 60-100 million years after the solar system formed
Untangling what happened in our Solar System tens or hundreds of millions of years ago is challenging.
Millions of objects of wildly different masses interacted...
NASA confirms that a piece of its battery pack smashed into a Florida home
NASA is in the business of launching things into orbit.
But what goes up must come down, and if whatever is coming down doesn’t burn...
Saturn’s ocean moon Enceladus is able to support life
My research team is working out how to detect extraterrestrial cells there.
Saturn has 146 confirmed moons – more than any other planet in the...
Ice deposits on Ceres might only be a few thousand years old
The dwarf planet Ceres has some permanently dark craters that hold ice.
Astronomers thought the ice was ancient when they were discovered, like in the...
The Milky Way’s most massive stellar black hole is only 2,000 light years away
Astronomers have found the largest stellar mass black hole in the Milky Way so far.
At 33 solar masses, it dwarfs the previous record-holder, Cygnus...
The solar wind is stripping oxygen and carbon away from Venus
The BepiColombo mission, a joint effort between JAXA and the ESA, was only the second (and most advanced) mission to visit Mercury, the least...
How Pluto got its mysterious heart
Pluto, once considered the ninth planet in our solar system, has intrigued scientists and the public alike with a distinct heart-shaped feature on its...
Astronomers discover the dimmest star system yet, hinting at hidden cosmic neighbors
Astronomers have stumbled upon the faintest star system ever observed, nestled within the vast expanse of the Milky Way.
This discovery may point to a...
The Milky Way’s history is written in streams of stars
The Milky Way is ancient and massive, a collection of hundreds of billions of stars, some dating back to the Universe’s early days.
During its...