Gazing upon the red, blood Moon during totality is only part of the wonders awaiting you. On July 27, 2018, the longest total lunar eclipse of the century took place. Totality […]
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The hallmark of a good scientist is changing your mind when new evidence arises. Here’s what that looks like. Science, like many things in life, is always a work-in-progress. While a […]
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft taught us more than we ever imagined about Saturn. Could we do something similar for Uranus and Neptune? From where we are in the Solar System, looking out […]
We’ve all heard the number: 4.5 billion years. But how do we know, and how certain are we that the Earth and Sun are the same age? Billions of years ago, […]
The truth might not be ‘out there’ at all. There may never have been another intelligent, technologically advanced alien species in the entire history of the Universe. When you take into […]
The Planetary Habitability Laboratory has made up some periodic tables of all of the confirmed and suspected exoplanets so far, plus planetary bodies in our own solar system.
Just because it isn’t Thanksgiving anymore doesn’t mean we don’t have an entire Universe to be thankful for. Every day, we have a choice whether we take our lives, our existence, […]
The ‘big discovery’ is nothing of the kind. We need a new planet-finding mission to probe the next frontier. Last week, NASA dropped a bombshell that it’s Kepler mission — the greatest […]
Did you experience totality? I did, for the first time. And it was, even as a well-prepared scientist, beyond anything I expected. “All that is nowAll that is goneAll that’s […]
Before we go venturing off to another star to look for life, why not look here? “If I had to describe myself to an alien I’d say I was bigger than […]
It would be disappointing and surprising if Earth were the only template for habitability in the Universe.
For every planet that orbits a star like our own, there are likely thousands of ‘orphan planets’ wandering the galaxy alone. Here in the Solar System, we can watch our star’s […]
It isn’t the rapture or some crazy prophesy, but science, that tells us when and how the end will come. “The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic […]
Watch what it might look like to travel from the sun to Jupiter at the speed of light.
In the aftermath of everything we’ve learned about what’s in the Universe, we can make much better estimates of how many alien civilizations are out there. In 1961, scientist Frank Drake […]
Just because a distant body has ice doesn’t mean it’ll ever have liquid water.
If you haven’t finished your holiday shopping yet, consider these 10 gifts, good any time of year! One of the hardest things when it comes to holiday shopping is to find […]
Instead of nearly-circular ellipses, comets are extraordinarily elongated, or even on an exit path. Why so different? When you look at how the planets orbit in our Solar System, the […]
How many calories are in human anyway?
The most elusive naked-eye planet is downright impossible to view for billions of us on Earth. “I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without […]
It isn’t about saving us from aliens at all. “To be on my very first spacewalk, to be outside, and to have contamination in my suit to the point that I […]
Churchill displays a surprising amount of knowledge on a question that we are still wrestling with.
A massive chart of humankind’s 113 spacecraft so far and where they’ve gone.
You know how bright the full Moon is. Well, from the Moon, how would the ‘full Earth’ compare? “I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted […]
If you think we’ve seen all there is to see in the Universe, you’re about to have your imagination unlocked. “Hubble often takes images of distant gravitationally lensed galaxies to […]
Now we know, on every scale. “There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without […]
We take for granted how much the Moon does for Earth, but not all of the changes would be bad. “If we get rid of the moon, women, those menstrual cycles […]
But that’s okay; the most likely world for life may not be like Earth, after all. “You can spend too much time wondering which of identical twins is the more alike.” […]
Last week, Cassini plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere. Here are the top 6 things we learned from it while it was alive. “Being a scientist and staring immensity and eternity in the […]
There’s never been a more important time to be aware of how the fate of the Earth depends on us. “We only have one planet that serves as an example and […]