Space & Future
Black holes don’t live forever, but they might live long enough to look like...
Black holes live forever, at least according to general relativity. Once material crosses a black hole's event horizon, it is trapped forever. Until the...
Volunteers help discover thousands of hidden “failed stars” near Earth
A worldwide group of volunteer sky watchers has helped scientists make one of the biggest discoveries of nearby brown dwarfs ever recorded.
Through NASA’s citizen...
How giant black holes shut down star formation
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have discovered powerful winds blasting out of some of the universe’s earliest galaxies, offering new clues about...
Why we need to treat Earth like a spaceship
Four humans recently looped around the moon.
Their vessel, an Artemis capsule, was a thin metal shell whose life-support system kept them alive: it provided...
Astronomers discover how a mini-Neptune survived beside a hot Jupiter
Astronomers using NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope have uncovered new clues about one of the strangest planetary systems ever discovered.
About 190 light years...
Astronomers witness the awesome power of a black hole’s “dancing jets”
Astronomers have long been fascinated by the powerful jets emanating from black holes.
These jets result from gas and dust being pulled into the black...
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...
Deep Space
Webb sees a supernova go off in a gravitationally lensed galaxy – for the...
Nature, in its infinite inventiveness, provides natural astronomical lenses that allow us to see objects beyond the normal reach of our telescopes.
They’re called gravitational...
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...
Webb Telescope detects most distant black hole merger in early universe
An international team of astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has discovered the most distant black hole merger ever observed.
This groundbreaking find...
How Startups on earth could blaze a trail for cities on Mars
If future explorers manage to set up communities on Mars, how will they pay their way? What’s likely to be the Red Planet’s primary...
The impossible black holes that shouldn’t exist
In 2023, gravitational wave detectors picked up the signature of a collision 7 billion light years away.
Two black holes had merged in an explosion...