Space & Future
After nearly 100 years, dark matter may finally have been seen
Nearly 100 years ago, astronomer Fritz Zwicky made a strange discovery while studying the movement of galaxies.
He noticed that galaxies were moving far faster...
Scientists find possible boiling oceans hidden beneath icy moons
Out in the cold, distant reaches of our solar system, many moons are wrapped in thick layers of ice.
At first glance, these worlds look...
Cosmic dust could help create life in space
Scientists have discovered that tiny particles of cosmic dust may play a much more important role in creating the building blocks of life than...
Why Earth has moving plates and Venus doesn’t
Scientists have taken an important step toward solving one of the biggest mysteries in planetary science: why Earth is covered in moving tectonic plates,...
Maybe Mars isn’t hiding liquid water under its south pole after all
For years, scientists have been intrigued by a mysterious signal coming from the icy south pole of Mars.
In 2018, a radar instrument called MARSIS,...
Earth and Theia were neighbors before they collided
According to the leading theory of how the Earth-Moon system formed (the Giant Impact Hypothesis), a Mars-sized object (named Theia) collided with a proto-Earth...
Scientists trace the moon’s birth to Earth’s nearby planetary twin
Around 4.5 billion years ago, a dramatic event changed Earth forever.
A massive, planet-sized body called Theia slammed into the young Earth in a violent...
Scientists recreate 100 billion stars in a virtual Milky Way for the first time
Scientists have achieved something that once seemed nearly impossible: they have created the first computer simulation of the Milky Way that represents more than...
Yes, the universe can expand faster than light
An expanding universe complicates this picture just a little bit, because the universe absolutely refuses to be straightforward.
Objects are still emitting light, and that...
Scientists discover what really powers Venus’s wild, planet-encircling winds
Imagine storms fiercer than the strongest hurricanes on Earth, blowing nonstop all the way around an entire planet.
This is exactly what happens on Venus,...
Astronomers spot first stars billions of years after they were supposed to die
Over the course of billions of years, the universe has steadily been evolving.
Thanks to the expansion of the universe, we are able to “see”...
Hunting for wandering black holes in dwarf galaxies
Tracking down black holes at the center of dwarf galaxies has proven difficult.
In part that is because they have a tendency to “wander” and...
Deep Space
A star came too close to a black hole and was torn apart. Surprisingly...
What happens when a star wanders too close to a supermassive black hole?
The obvious story is that it gets sucked in, never to be...
What happens to planets with hydrogen atmospheres?
When telescopes became powerful enough to find planets orbiting distant stars, scientists were surprised to see that a lot of them didn’t have atmospheres...
This young star’s magnetic heartbeat runs 10 times faster than the Sun’s
Astronomers have taken a close look at the magnetic activity of a young star strikingly similar to our own sun—and discovered that it has...
International Space Station was contaminated with chemicals not from the Earth
Imagine if the dust in your house had some chemicals that were more concentrated than what's usually found in most American or Western European...
Scientists find strange orbits of ‘Tatooine’ planetary disks
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have found striking orbital geometries in protoplanetary disks around binary stars.
While disks orbiting the most compact...