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 […]
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As we embrace green solutions, nuclear should absolutely be part of the equation. For thousands upon thousands of years, humans have been harnessing the power of nature to provide energy […]
Once only dark energy remains, empty space still won’t be completely empty. Imagine, if you dare, the very end of the Universe. The stars — past, present, and future — have all burned out. […]
Even if you remove everything you can from the Universe, some energy will still remain. Here’s what that means. Imagine, if you can, what it would mean to have a Universe […]
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 contains more water than all the Great Lakes combined, and the science of our planet explains why. Although practically all of Earth’s human population lives on dry land, our surface […]
It’s one way to interpret recent X-ray data, but it conflicts with much, much better data we already have. Earlier this month, a new study came out claiming something shocking: perhaps […]
Everything on Earth is made of atoms and their building blocks. Without this one rule, they’d never make anything interesting. Take a look around you at everything on Earth. If […]
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. […]
Preventable deaths for all five leading mortality causes are "consistently higher" in rural communities.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will truly usher in a new era of astronomy. If you want to find the very first galaxy of all, you have to understand not […]
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 […]
Trump is #45 but Pence is #48 – and other strange consequences of the curious office of vice president.
Geologists may have spotted evidence of the beginning stages of a subduction zone, a process that drives the movement of Earth's tectonic plates.
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 […]
Remember the announcement of a galaxy with no dark matter? It’s just been re-examined, with astounding results. In theory, all galaxies should contain copious amounts of dark matter, with one […]
Your microbiome begins in your mouth. Why don't we look there more often?
Everything is being driven apart. But there’s hope of reaching what’s currently so far away. For the first 7.8 billion years, the Universe unfolded exactly as scientists would have expected in […]
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 […]
There is a fundamental difference between matter and antimatter. But not enough of one to explain our Universe. Our Universe is a vast and enormous place, and if there’s one […]
The blob that's astonishing science gets its own exhibit.
If economic growth knowingly increases mass-scale suffering, can we stop chasing it?
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 […]
Researchers evaluated the best and worst ways to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in a recent report.
Black holes are regions of extreme gravity, but dark matter barely interacts at all. Do they play well together? Black holes are some of the most extreme objects in the […]
Maybe, but that probably doesn’t mean what you think it does. Of all the unsolved puzzles in the Universe, perhaps the most confounding is the dark matter problem. If we look […]
NASA's intrepid Curiosity rolls upward into Mars history.
One often-neglected result of climate change is ocean acidification. If this process continues, we may start to see fewer fish and more jellyfish.
Traveling interstellar distances in human lifetimes is an amazing dream, but it won’t ever be achieved like this. For centuries, ever since we realized that every star we can see in […]
We're living longer than ever, but few of us will save enough to afford this historical boon.