Space & Future
Scientists get their best-ever look at distant planet’s surface
Astronomers have found thousands of worlds in faraway star systems, but one of the questions that’s been hardest to answer is the one that...
Is extracting oxygen from lunar soil the future of space exploration
A new race to the moon is emerging between the United States and China.
Unlike fifty years ago, the goal is no longer just about...
Everything we thought we knew about dark energy could be wrong
For nearly 30 years, scientists have believed that a mysterious force called dark energy is causing the universe to expand faster and faster.
But a...
The Sun is changing and we don’t know why
Put your ear to the ground in the right place and you can hear a train coming from miles away.
Long before it appears on...
How Giant Galaxies Burned Bright and Died Young In the Early Universe
One of the biggest mysteries in astronomy is why some of the largest galaxies in the early universe stopped making stars surprisingly early in...
Red Dwarf Stars Caught Devouring Earth-Like Planets
Astronomers have discovered some of the clearest evidence yet that stars can consume their own planets.
In a new study published in the journal Monthly...
Something just passed between us and a distant star
On the night of 18 December 2019, a star in our satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, briefly got brighter.
Not dramatically nor explosively, just...
Ancient “Cosmic Cities” Were Already Shaping Galaxies Soon After the Big Bang
Astronomers have discovered that galaxies were already being shaped by their surroundings just 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang, much earlier than scientists...
Black Hole “Gold Rush” Reveals Hundreds of Hidden Cosmic Collisions
Astronomers have unveiled the largest collection yet of gravitational wave detections, marking a major leap forward in our understanding of black holes and the...
The Sun just did something nobody expected and it kept going for 19 days
The Sun is not known for being quiet!
It blasts out energy equivalent to 100 billion nuclear bombs every single second, routinely hurls billion tonne...
Ancient Region Near Jupiter May Have Created Six Types of Meteorites
Scientists have discovered that a region just outside Jupiter’s orbit may have acted like a giant “planet factory” in the early solar system, producing...
A Beautiful Death How a Dying Star Created the Crystal Ball Nebula
Planetary nebulae like the Crystal Ball Nebula (NGC 1514) are sort of like stellar obituaries.
Though crystal balls supposedly reveal the future, the Crystal Ball...
Deep Space
Why new exoplanet discovery is a big deal
Researchers have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet—a planet outside of our solar system.
The planet, named TOI-700 e, falls within its star’s habitable zone, meaning it...
Martian sandworms: How CO₂ ice blocks carve mysterious gullies on Mars
The strange gullies etched into the red sands of Mars have long puzzled scientists.
Were they carved by running water, avalanches, or perhaps even traces...
What would happen if the solar system gained a super-earth?
In this era of exoplanet discovery, astronomers have found over 5,000 confirmed exoplanets, with thousands more awaiting confirmation and many billions more waiting to...
Early planetary migration can explain missing planets
A new model that accounts for the interplay of forces acting on newborn planets can explain two puzzling observations that have cropped up repeatedly...
Webb telescope sees through dust to find young stars
Images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope contain telltale signs of two dozen previously unseen young stars about 7,500 light years from Earth, say...