‘Fast Optical Bursts’ will confound ground-based astronomy. As of 2021, planet Earth is currently experiencing the least pristine night sky in recorded history. Prior to the development of artificial lighting, […]
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Over the coming decades, over 100,000 new satellites are expected. For countless millennia, whenever we were faced with a clear, cloudless, moonless night, all of humanity was able to witness […]
Could 16 Psyche make every person on Earth a billionaire? The space mining race is heating up.
The rings are raining down onto the planet, and disappearing surprisingly fast. 4.5 billion years ago, our Solar System first formed. Protoplanetary disks, which all solar systems are thought to […]
Objects coming into our solar system have an origins story to tell.
An unprecedented number of new satellites threatens the night sky as we know it. Will we act in time to save it?
It’s not a question of could they, but have they? Here’s how we’ll find out. It’s no secret that fragments of asteroids, comets, and other spaceborne objects have been found here […]
Forget about alien nonsense. The Universe as it actually is doesn’t need any embellishments to be interesting. In our Solar System, the planets, moons, asteroids, comets and other masses are […]
A case for looking beyond the planetary scientist’s (or even the astronomer’s) definition. Ever since 2006, when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially defined the term planet — introducing the term ‘dwarf […]
Want some crazy space phenomena? You don’t have to leave the neighborhood for it.
About 3.8 billion years ago, the inner planets were bombarded with a cataclysm of asteroids. Could Planet V have been the cause?
It’s one of only five spacecraft that will exit the Solar System, and the only one we have a chance to aim at another star. Of all the spacecraft ever launched, […]
It doesn’t propagate at infinite speeds, and that’s a problem for Newton. When you look at the Sun, the light you’re seeing isn’t the light that’s being emitted right now. Instead, […]
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 […]
It’s the largest, most massive planet in the Solar System. But what’s the real story behind all the impacts on Jupiter? One of the most terrifying prospects here on Earth is […]
What will it take to conquer our immemorial space dream?
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 […]
And Dr. Jill Tarter never once lost her composure.
A new computer model solves a pair of Jovian riddles.
It’s one of the two best meteor showers of the year. Don’t let the full Moon stop you. Every year, as the Earth intercepts the debris streams of comets and asteroids […]
The object, originally dubbed “Ultima Thule,” was renamed to “Arrokoth” due to the connection between the word “Thule” and the Nazis.
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 […]
Doomsday prophesies have never once come to pass, but they’ve never had science on their side like this before. Every year, the Earth completes an orbital revolution around the Sun, returning […]
Happy birthday to Pluto, discovered on this day in 1930. Pluto, first discovered in 1930, was no more than a distant dot in our most powerful telescopes. Clyde Tombaugh’s original images […]
This is what we’ve learned from first object ever discovered to enter our Solar System from interstellar space. Billions of years ago, our Solar System was an extraordinarily different place […]
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 […]
Imagine you had perfect technology and unlimited fuel. How far could you go? Human spaceflight has brought us beyond Earth, but we could potentially venture even farther. The very first launch […]
If you’ve ever wondered what truly lies beyond Neptune, this is one interview you won’t want to miss! Our Solar System formed some 4.6 billion years ago from a molecular cloud […]
Sometimes, the biggest answers to the deepest questions come in the most unexpected of places. In the Solar System, anything out past Neptune is generally considered to be the outer reaches […]
Time to build a Corellian shipyard?