Hubble has been operational for nearly 30 years, and still produces the most spectacular images of all. Here are this year’s best. Hubble, astronomy’s revolutionary observatory, narrowly survived last year’s gyroscope […]
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A generation ago, NASA launched their great observatories to explore the Universe. It’s time for round 2. Throughout the history of astronomy, every advance we’ve ever made has come about because […]
Our friendly neighborhood gas giant serves as a cosmic catcher’s mitt.
The flying rotorcraft drone is set to land on Saturn’s largest moon in 2034.
From Newton to today’s scientists, we’re only seeing part of the story unfold.
Despite its changing shape and its unprecedented dimming, a supernova this year, decade, or even century is highly unlikely. For months, skywatchers have enjoyed a view of the night sky […]
One of NASA’s original great observatories, Spitzer showed us the infrared Universe as never before. On January 30, 2020, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope was retired after a 17 year mission. Prior […]
It would be the ultimate method for solving our pollution or hazardous/radioactive waste problems, but we’ll never do it. Here’s why. Imagine our planet as it was for the first 4.55 […]
Could 16 Psyche make every person on Earth a billionaire? The space mining race is heating up.
When the supernova occurs, a whole slew of signals will arrive at once. But there’s one hint that could successfully warn us in advance. As Betelgeuse continues to vary in brightness […]
Doomsday prophesies have never once come to pass, but they’ve never had science on their side like this before. Every year, the Earth completes an orbital revolution around the Sun, returning […]
From billions of miles away, a faint, single pixel shows us how precious and alone Earth truly is. There are people alive today who can remember a time where no human-made […]
We know a lot about what else is out there, but we still don’t know everything. In the quest for life in the Universe, it makes sense to look at […]
The NASA probe has ventured beyond our solar system.
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The Solar System’s outermost, undisputed planet wasn’t discovered until the 19th century. Here’s how you can easily find it yourself this December. There’s no greater scientific thrill than discovering something […]
The closest star to our own doesn’t just host one rocky planet, but a second, larger ‘super-Earth’ much farther out. Of all the stars in the Universe, the closest one to […]
Some have suggested that there is no hidden giant out there.
No matter how long you wait, the matter that makes you probably won’t end up inside a black hole. It’s one of the most pervasive ideas out there: if you wait […]
The meaning—and range—of “habitable” goes much farther than we once thought.
And how cutting just $1 billion per year in funding from NASA’s budget would be a catastrophe for science. When you think of the great cosmic beyond and what we know […]
Kepler showed us that the Universe is full of planets around other stars. TESS is giving us our next great leap. It’s been nearly a decade since NASA’s Kepler mission first […]
While nothing is ever certain about the future, here are 10 great achievements you can bet on. Every year, unexpected scientific discoveries challenge what we know. Observations using the Atacama Large […]
If we could see in three dimensions instead of two, we’d never have thought otherwise. Perhaps the most famous sight of a dying star is the Ring Nebula, discovered in […]
If an AT-AT walker (or something even larger) wanted to walk across a frozen lake, how thick would the ice have to be? Each winter, one of the most spectacular phenomena […]
In all the Universe, there’s only one Earth. But can we find the other worlds that are like ours? Even though the ingredients for life have been confirmed to be practically […]
Three scientists publish a paper proving that Mercury, not Venus, is the closest planet to Earth.
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What should a black hole look like? Our theoretical predictions are about to meet our first observations. In science, there’s no moment more exciting than when you get to confront […]
New research spots a remarkable meeting of Jupiter’s jet streams and its magnetic field and proposes that it may contain the explanation for the planets’ striking cloud patterns.
If we restrict ourselves to looking for extraterrestrial life on Earth-like worlds, we might miss it entirely. When we think about life out there in the Universe, far beyond the […]
If we ruin the night sky too severely, ground-based astronomy could suffer tremendously. Here’s why space is no replacement. There is an existential threat to astronomy as we know it, […]