Our friendly neighborhood gas giant serves as a cosmic catcher’s mitt.
Search Results
You searched for: Asteroid
The cosmic story of us wasn’t inevitable, but the culmination of many chance events. By the time our planet was four billion years old, the rise of large plants and animals […]
Time to build a Corellian shipyard?
It’s the first time humans have landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon.
Even if we don’t destroy ourselves, we always have the Universe to contend with. Wiping out all life on Earth is hard, but causing mass extinctions is easy. The 1991 eruption […]
When scientists claim that an unexplained phenomenon might be due to aliens, they’re giving up on science. Whenever science discovers a new, unexpected phenomenon, it represents a tremendous opportunity to learn […]
Not only can’t astronomers and planetary scientists agree, but the IAU made it worse for everyone. If you were alive in 2006, you likely remember a momentous event in astronomy: […]
Cryovolcanoes that eject ice instead of magma have been confirmed to exist on Ceres, which will help studying this formation on other planets and moons throughout the solar system.
The Geminid meteor shower grows more intense with every year, and it’s expected to be particularly bright in 2018.
Happy birthday to Pluto, discovered on this day in 1930. Pluto, first discovered in 1930, was no more than a distant dot in our most powerful telescopes. Clyde Tombaugh’s original images […]
Without this one ingredient, there wouldn’t be enough ‘glue’ to hold the Universe together. Of all the things in the Universe to be thankful for — the stars, planets, atoms, molecules, and […]
Despite warnings and protestations from astronomers and skywatchers, Starlink is moving fast and breaking things. In May of this year, Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched the first group of its new satellite […]
Observations have been ruined; scientific satellites with the right-of-way have had to alter course. Here’s a how-to guide to doing better. In any field of business or industry, the prevailing rule […]
The planet has had life on it, in some form or another, for nearly as long as Earth has existed. If you came to our Solar System right after it formed, […]
Yes, life exists in our Universe. No, that statement doesn’t equal science. Imagine you’ve encountered a natural phenomenon you want to understand better, but don’t have the tools to do so. […]
“To promote the development of a commercial asteroid resources industry for outer space in the United States and to increase the exploration and utilization of asteroid resources in outer space.”
There are millions of asteroids in the solar system. A new study might tell us where they came from.
The first identified visitor from another solar system gets its own Starts With A Bang podcast! In 2017, the incredible happened: for the first time in history, we were able to […]
These ten ghostly astronomical sights house some deep-and-frightening scientific truths within them. With a huge suite of different observatories for viewing the Universe, innumerable details can be revealed. This ‘Godzilla’ asterism […]
Some of the meteorites that strike our planet originate from our red neighbor, Mars. Here’s how we know. As the planets orbit the Sun, well-separated from one another, we tend to […]
We aren’t lunarly exclusive. Earth has a few minimoons whizzing around us, including one that comes back into our orbit every 20 years or so.
The end of the world is the main focus of his new book.
The neuralnanorobotics are coming.
If you’ve ever wondered what truly lies beyond Neptune, this is one interview you won’t want to miss! Our Solar System formed some 4.6 billion years ago from a molecular cloud […]
The chances of an asteroid large enough to be a threat to areas where human beings are concentrated are small. Still, it’s what’s known as a “high impact” result.
Earth wasn’t the only potentially habitable planet in the early Solar System. What happened to Mars? If you could travel back in time to the early stages of the Solar System, […]
This asteroid is feeling itself, clearly.
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 […]
In 1789, William Herschel discovered this unique moon around Saturn. 230 years later, its secrets are more promising than ever. Today marks the 230th anniversary of the discovery of Enceladus, one […]
Imagine you had perfect technology and unlimited fuel. How far could you go? Human spaceflight has brought us beyond Earth, but we could potentially venture even farther. The very first launch […]