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Adams was infamously scooped when Neptune was discovered in 1846. His failure wasn’t the end, but a prelude to a world-changing discovery.

In the expanding Universe, different ways of measuring its rate give incompatible answers. Nobel Laureate Adam Riess explains what it means.

The James Webb Space Telescope viewed Neptune, our Solar System’s final planet, for the first time. Here’s what we saw, and what it means.

From before the Big Bang to Voyager 1, particle physicist Harry Cliff takes us on a whiz-bang tour of the Universe’s evolution.

In the 1980s, some wardens started painting their cells with a shade of pink dubbed “Baker-Miller Pink.”

A second Enlightenment would have a far bigger task: Saving civilization itself.

Is “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch a condemnation of sin or a celebration of hedonism? Art historians still aren’t sure.

Big Think columnist Adam Frank makes the case for why the 2023 video game Alan Wake 2 is a boundary-pushing piece of art.

The so-called “court painter of Silicon Valley” was shaped by her youth in communist Poland but looks forward to a future ruled by celebrity robots. 

Measurements of the acceleration of the universe don’t agree, stumping physicists working to understand the cosmic past and future. A new proposal seeks to better align these estimates — and is likely testable.

Every December, the Geminid meteor shower reaches its peak. Its 2021 show will be spectacular, but only if you do it right.

I also can’t conjure sounds, smells, or any other kind of sensory stimulation inside my head. This is called “aphantasia.”

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 […]

The last image puts it all in perspective. Compared to what we find in our Solar System, galaxies are truly enormous. The Sun may be 109 times the diameter of […]

Move over, IC 1101. You may be impressively large, but you never stood a chance against the largest known galaxy: Alcyoneus.

Halley’s comet only visits every ~76 years, but its meteors arrive twice each year. The most famous comet of all — Halley’s comet — returns to our inner Solar System every ~76 years. Halley’s comet […]

Something isn’t adding up, but it isn’t a calibration error. It’s been nearly 100 years since we discovered that the Universe was expanding. Ever since, the scientists who study the […]

It peaks the nights of August 11–13, but it’s no longer the year’s most reliable meteor shower. Every year, beginning in mid-July, planet Earth commences passing through an enormous debris […]

Every observation out into deep space is also a look back in time. Whenever you observe an object, you aren’t viewing it in its present state. When one of Jupiter’s moons […]

If we want our conclusions to be meaningful, our data had better be robust. When it comes to the Universe, there’s a whole lot that doesn’t add up. All the matter […]

For northern hemisphere skywatchers, it might just be the century’s best comet so far. Every once in a while, large, icy objects pass through the inner Solar System. C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) […]

It’s all well and good to discuss how our humanity evolved – but what even is humanity?

Don’t miss the summer’s greatest natural sights of all. Some of the natural highlights of our night sky are easy to overlook. Every year, you’ll hear about some of the brightest, […]

Amid such suffering, people need some joy.

With just a few more neutron star mergers, we’ll have the best constraints of all-time. How fast is the Universe expanding? Ever since the expanding Universe was first discovered nearly […]

An Oxford scientist claims a Nobel-Prize-winning conclusion is wrong.

And which ones are probably examples where we’ve fooled ourselves? Every once in a while — multiple times per year — a new research finding fails to line up with our theoretical expectations. In […]

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 […]

Learn how to get the best views no matter where you are. Every year, no matter what else is occurring on Earth or in the heavens, you can rely on two […]

Could this finally be the clue we’ve hoped for in uncovering the truth about dark matter? In the physical sciences, theory and observation are supposed to work hand-in-hand. Theorists work out […]