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 […]
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California’s Bobcat Fire has reached Mount Wilson Observatory’s doorstep. 100 years ago, our understanding of the Universe was very different from what it is today. Einstein’s General Relativity, our theory […]
Young galaxies are bright and blue; old galaxies are red and dead. So how did this old, red galaxy form so early? The observable Universe contains two trillion distinct galaxies, but […]
The Leonid meteor shower peaks today. Its parent comet taught us where meteor showers come from. Every year, as Earth regularly orbits the Sun, meteor showers repeatedly recur. While August’s Perseids […]
It’s fundamentally different from space. Here’s how. Here’s a question that most of us have been asked at some point in our lives, “what’s the shortest distance between two points?” By […]
You’d have to throw out a lot of known physics for this to even be a possibility. Here’s why. It’s an undeniable scientific fact that dark matter must exist in order […]
There are exposed planetary cores orbiting stars, and we may have already found them. When we take a look at the planets in our Solar System, there’s a pretty clear difference […]
How does one supernova get so bright, so energetic, and so massive? It’s a spectacular mystery to solve. On February 22, 2016, one of humanity’s automated sky-scanning telescopes — the Pan-STARRS Survey for […]
There was less than a 2 second delay between gravitational waves and light, but that’s incredibly meaningful. There’s an important rule in relativity that — as far as we know — all objects must […]
The history of the Universe is forever imprinted in our own bodies. We can learn a lot about the history of the Universe just by looking at each of our own […]
There are three answers depending on what you consider the “edge,” but only two of them are known. If you were to go as far out into space as you can […]
As soon as you start thinking about energy and gravity, you’ll realize the need to go beyond it. When it comes to a science like physics, theoretical expectations must always be […]
CERN’s bold new proposal has physicists confronting the biggest question of all: is building a new collider worth it? If you want to discover anything novel about the natural, physical […]
It’s absolutely true that atoms are mostly empty space. But removing even that empty space is impossible, and this is why. If you were to take any object in the Universe […]
The laws of physics are not time-reversal invariant. Here’s how we know. No matter when, where, or what you are in the Universe, you experience time in only one direction: forwards. […]
Will Storr has written a masterful guide to writing with “The Science of Storytelling.”
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 […]
All supernovae are not created equal. After a 14 year investigation, the brightest ones have a surprising explanation. In 2006, astronomers witnessed a supernova that defied conventional explanation. Typically, supernovae […]
Few scientific ideas have been as polarizing as string theory. There are good reasons to both love it and hate it. String theory is perhaps the most controversial big idea in […]
There are three possible ways we’ll find alien life. With all of these chances, the only question is which will come first. Given everything humanity has learned about the Universe, it […]
It’s a supergiant star in the final stage of its life, and it just dimmed by an enormous amount. What’s going on? When you take a look at the stars in […]
If economic growth knowingly increases mass-scale suffering, can we stop chasing it?
Researchers evaluated the best and worst ways to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in a recent report.
Research is for the experts. Listen to them instead. “Research both sides and make up your own mind.” It’s simple, straightforward, common sense advice. And when it comes to issues like […]
Is information the fifth form of matter?
It’s 100 years since astronomy’s famous ‘great debate.’ We still haven’t learned the most compelling lesson of all. So, you’ve arrived at a crossroads: you think the world works in a […]
If quantum gravity is right, these gravitational ripples must be more than waves; they must be particles, too. Back in February of 2016, LIGO made an announcement that changed our […]
A new book by constitutional attorney Andrew Seidel takes on Christian nationalism.
Astronomy’s enduring quest is to go farther, fainter, and more detailed than ever before. Here’s the edge of the cosmic frontier. Astronomers have always sought to push back the viewable […]
There’s a million things we haven’t done. But just you wait. The Universe as we know it began some 13.8 billion years ago with the onset of the hot Big Bang. […]