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This year marks 2,000 years since the birth of the Roman author of the first natural encyclopedia.

Sex, it turns out, isn’t as easy or simple as popular culture might lead us to believe.

Recasting the iconic Carrington Event as just one of many superstorms in Earth’s past, scientists reveal the potential for even more massive eruptions from the sun.

No matter how your year went, Hubble’s views of the Universe never disappoint. Year after year, Hubble’s telescopic views are unparalleled. Saturn, its rings, and 5 of its moons are […]

Americans lose an estimated 321 million work days every year due to anxiety and depression.

Neptune holds records in our Solar System, but the Universe gets even faster. Here on Earth, extreme weather events can cause dramatic wind speed spikes. When hurricanes are at their most […]

For the ancients, hospitality was an inviolable law enforced by gods and priests and anyone else with the power to make you pay dearly for mistreating a stranger.

We’ve already observed three cases where it’s happened. When you look at an object in space, it’s pretty easy to tell if it’s a star or a planet. Stars are […]

Spirals, ellipticals, and irregulars are all more common than ring galaxies. At last, we know how these ultra-rare objects are made.

For some reason, the charges on the electron and proton are equal and opposite, and their numbers are equal, too. But why?

Hubble’s still going strong after 31+ years. James Webb will never make it that long. Every decision that’s made — in both astronomy and in life — comes with its own set of pros and […]

We can describe what we see happening, but we don’t understand why. Despite our vast cosmic knowledge, enormous unknowns remain. The quantum fluctuations inherent to space, stretched across the Universe […]

With sodium-sensitive eyes, we’d see it every new Moon. With no detectable gases, the Moon appears to be atmosphere-free. The Moon as seen from a view above the majority of Earth’s […]

Famished, not famous: retrace Orwell’s hunger days, when he was one of the city’s legion of poor foreigners.

By the end of the decade, we may discover one million black holes. A large enough mass in a compact volume inevitably forms a black hole. Both inside and outside the […]

Smallpox was nothing new in 1721.

Just say no to artist’s illustrations. This is what the Universe actually looks like. The Universe we observe often surpasses our greatest imaginings. This 20-year time-lapse of stars near the center […]

In 1990, we only knew of the planets in our own Solar System. Today, the exoplanet count is more than 5000. Here's what we've learned.

50% of stars are in Sun-like ‘singlet’ systems. The planetary nebulae we see just don’t line up. Around 7 billion years from now, our Sun’s life will end. As the Sun […]

We bring multifaceted selves to our interactions, and in these interactions co-create each other again and again. 

Walter Pitts rose from the streets to MIT, but couldn’t escape himself.

On May 4, 1970, the National Guard shot and killed four students during an anti-war protest. The massacre went on to change American culture forever.

It's a common misconception that to be a Stoic is to be in possession of a stiff upper lip.

Can passenger airships make a triumphantly 'green' comeback?

From Brahms to Tchaikovsky, here's a curated list of composers whose music has shaped the classical canon.

The world isn’t ending! But we are likely at the beginning of a profound transformation.

The inside of every black hole leads to the birth of a new Universe. Could our Universe have arisen from one?

Despite fact check campaigns, anti-vaccination influence is growing.

Sir Ken Robinson died on August 21 of cancer at the age of 70.

The Big Bang is our accepted origin of the Universe. But is there another possibility? Since the mid-1960s and the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background, the Big Bang has […]