Newton thought that gravitation would happen instantly, propagating at infinite speeds. Einstein showed otherwise; gravity isn’t instant.
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New telescopes, radio dishes, and gravitational wave detectors are needed for next-generation science. Will the USA lead the way?
Once science operations begin for James Webb, we’ll never look at the Universe the same way again. Here’s what everyone should know.
Phobos and Deimos only have two explanations, and neither one adds up.
Valles Marineris is the Solar System’s grandest canyon, many times longer, wider, and deeper than the Grand Canyon. What scarred Mars so?
And what can it teach us about our Solar System’s earliest days? In many ways, astronomy is unique among the sciences. In every other field, you have the ability to design […]
Our Solar System’s outer reaches, and what’s in them, was predicted long before the first Oort Cloud object was ever discovered.
On the morning of June 30, 1908, an explosion of more than 10 megatons occurred above the sparsely populated Siberian Taiga. What caused the so-called Tunguska event?
The most unique interloper into our Solar System has a natural explanation that fits perfectly — no aliens required.
Based on the atoms that they’re made out of, the innermost planet should always be the densest. Here’s why Earth beats Mercury, hands down.
Finding alien technology on the seafloor would be truly incredible. This extraordinary claim, however, is debunked by the actual evidence.
Scientists find routes using arches of chaos that can lead to much faster space travel.
Since the time of Galileo, Saturn’s rings have remained an unexplained mystery. A new idea may have finally solved the longstanding puzzle.
The stars, planets, and many moons are extremely round. Why don’t they take other shapes?
If a large asteroid strikes Earth, it has the potential to release an enormous amount of energy, leading to local or even global catastrophes. The strike that led to the […]
Think there are habitable super-Earths out there? Think again. Here in our Solar System, we have two very distinct types of planets: small, terrestrial, rocky worlds, with thin (or no) atmospheres […]
Astronomers possibly solve the mystery of how the enormous Oort cloud, with over 100 billion comet-like objects, was formed.
The definitive answer requires better, unbiased data. Despite all the advances that have occurred in human history, one extraordinary puzzle still remains right in our own backyard: we aren’t sure how […]
If dark energy gets stronger with time, our fate could be an utter catastrophe. When it comes to the entire Universe, one of the biggest existential questions we’re capable of […]
While Mars is known as a frozen, red planet today, it has all the evidence we could ask for of a watery past, lasting for approximately the first 1.5 billion […]
Debris from Pluto-sized collisions, not aliens, are streaming through the galaxy. In 2017, scientists discovered an object passing through our Solar System that was unlike anything else we had ever seen. […]
With launch costs dropping and enormous numbers of new satellites filling the sky, can’t we just do it all from space?
The meteorites suggest astronomers may have small, early planets wrong.
In 2006, Pluto was demoted in a very controversial decision. Unless you ignore nearly all of planetary science, it’ll never be one again.
Science can teach us so much about our planet, but something more must compel us to take care of it. If you want to understand our planet, the best way to […]
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 […]
A 71% wet Mars would have two major land masses and one giant ‘Medimartian Sea.’
There’s more light than we can account for, and we’ve just measured it robustly for the first time. When we look out at the darkest night skies available on Earth, even […]
We once thought the Moon was completely airless, but it turns out it has an atmosphere, after all. Even wilder: It has a tail of its own.
Avi Loeb says it’s aliens. Every other astronomer disagrees. Here’s why. In 2017, an astronomical event occurred that was unlike any other: for the first time, we observed an object that […]