Search Results

Out of the four rocky planets in our Solar System, only Earth presently has plate tectonics. But billions of years ago, Venus had them, too.

Although we still don’t know the question, we know that the answer to life, the Universe, and everything is 42. Here are 5 possibilities.

Debris from Pluto-sized collisions, not aliens, are streaming through the galaxy. In 2017, scientists discovered an object passing through our Solar System that was unlike anything else we had ever seen. […]

The most unique interloper into our Solar System has a natural explanation that fits perfectly — no aliens required.

In the early stages of our Solar System, there were three life-friendly planets: Venus, Earth, and Mars. Only Earth thrived. Here’s why.

A new study shows that the Bernardinelli-Bernstein Comet is much larger than previously thought — potentially the largest ever spotted.

Each year in mid-August, Earth plows through the debris stream of an enormous comet, creating the Perseids. 2023’s show will be magnificent!

There’s an entire Universe out there. So, with all that space, all those planets, and all those chances at life, why do we all live here?

The stars, planets, and many moons are extremely round. Why don’t they take other shapes?

Each of our three nearest stars might have an Earth-like planet in orbit around it. Here’s what we’ll learn when we finally observe it.

The secret ingredient is violence, and it just might indicate that “moonmoons” aren’t as uncommon as most astronomers think.

In 2006, the IAU demoted Pluto. Here’s what we know today. In 2006, the last planet in our Solar System suffered an unforgettable insult, as Pluto — known for generations as our ninth […]

Water is vital for life. Luckily for spacefaring humans, the solar system is full of it.

There will always be “wolf-criers” whose claims wither under scrutiny. But aliens are certainly out there, if science dares to find them.

NASA has finally chosen which flagship mission, like Hubble and JWST, will launch in ~2040. Detecting alien life is now a reachable goal.

Empty, intergalactic space is just 2.725 K: not even three degrees above absolute zero. But the Boomerang Nebula is even colder.

The far side of the Moon is incredibly different from the Earth-facing side. 63 years later, we know why the Moon’s faces are not alike.

Astronomers possibly solve the mystery of how the enormous Oort cloud, with over 100 billion comet-like objects, was formed.

With a telescope at just the right distance from the Sun, we could use its gravity to enhance and magnify a potentially inhabited planet.

Scientists find an exoplanet whose strange behavior may lead to the Solar’s System hidden ninth planet.

The 1998 hit is making a comeback. Stop what you’re doing and watch the original.

Our Universe requires dark matter in order to make sense of things, astrophysically. Could massive photons do the trick?

Gravitation, all on its own, can reveal what’s present in the cosmos like nothing else.

The largest moon around our last planet didn’t originate with Neptune. When it comes to the moons of our Solar System, there’s only one planet that doesn’t fit in with our […]

We just observed the first ‘lunar formation’ in an exoplanetary system. This one image, above, is the first to show moons actively forming around a planet. This colourful image shows […]

The view from beyond Pluto is far enough from Earth that we can see the stars shift. NASA’s New Horizons, humanity’s first spacecraft to encounter Pluto, is more than 4.3 billion […]

The odds are slim, but the consequences would be devastating. Here’s what would happen, plus how to avoid it.

It likely isn’t the rare occurrence we once thought it was. In our Solar System, there’s one overwhelming source of mass that all the planets orbit around: our Sun. Each planet […]

Shortly after planet Earth formed, life took a permanent hold on our surface. But just how common is such an outcome?

Modern science progresses with an intensity and even irrationality that Aristotle could not fathom.