This oddball system of three stars might be our best chance at finding nearby life in the Universe.
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The outer planets’ clouds hide the weirdness within.
Chemical changes inside Mars’ core caused it to lose its magnetic field. This, in turn, caused it to lose its oceans. But how?
These theoretical megastructures represent one way an advanced civilization might harvest energy from stars.
The classic picture of Jupiter’s great rocky core might be entirely wrong.
Ever wonder what would happen if we got sucked into a black hole? Turns out we could live in it for a while — if it was big enough.
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The recently discovered Oort cloud comet, Bernardinelli–Bernstein, has the largest known nucleus: 119 km. Here’s what it could do to Earth.
In all of human history, only 5 spacecraft have had the right trajectory to exit the Solar System. Will they ever catch Voyager 1?
Do you think you know the Solar System? Here’s a fact about each planet that might surprise you when you see it!
Like Mars today, Venus used to be a sci-fi superstar. Recent discoveries could re-ignite our interest in Earth’s “evil twin.”
The odds are slim, but the consequences would be literally world-ending. There really is a chance of a black hole devouring the Earth.
The cosmic scales governing the Universe are almost unbelievably large. What if we shrunk the Sun down to be just a grain of sand?
The secret ingredient is violence, and it just might indicate that “moonmoons” aren’t as uncommon as most astronomers think.
While humanity has been skywatching since ancient times, much of our cosmic understanding has come about only recently. Very recently.
With the invention of the leap year, the Julian calendar was used worldwide for over 1500 years. Over time, it led only to catastrophe.
As planets with too many volatiles and too little mass orbit their parent stars, their atmospheres photoevaporate, spelling doom for some.
For thousands of years, humanity had no idea how far away the stars were. In the 1600s, Newton, Huygens, and Hooke all claimed to get there.
Earth is the Solar System’s only known inhabited planet. Could Venus, if its phosphine signal is real, be our second world with life?
Despite being the closest planet to the Sun, Mercury “only” reaches 800 °F at its hottest. Venus is always hotter, even at night.
Although early Earth was a molten hellscape, once it cooled, life arose almost immediately. That original chain of life remains unbroken.
Whether you call it 10 quintillion, 10 million trillion, or 10 billion billion, it’s a 1 followed by 19 zeroes.
In 1667, a core-collapse supernova happened right here in the Milky Way, invisible to all humans. ~350 years later, here’s what JWST sees.
The Universe is an amazing place. Under the incredible, infrared gaze of JWST, it’s coming into focus better than ever before.
Each year in mid-August, Earth plows through the debris stream of an enormous comet, creating the Perseids. 2023’s show will be magnificent!
Figuring out the answer involved a prism, a pail of water, and a 50 year effort by the most famous father-son astronomer duo ever.
Leap day only comes once every four years, including in 2024. But the reason we have it, including when we do and don’t, may surprise you.
Between the least massive star and most massive planet lies the mysterious brown dwarf: a class of objects that are neither star nor planet.
In 2020, scientists took more than a kilo of moon rock and soil back to Earth for testing.
On Earth, microbial growth is common in lava tubes no matter the location and climate, whether it’s ice-volcano interactions in Iceland or hot, sand-floored lava tubes in Saudi Arabia.
Some of them have survived the wilds of space for billions of years.