There’s real, straightforward science behind the destruction of an Alderaan-sized planet. In all of science fiction, perhaps the most iconic moment of destruction occurs in 1977’s Star Wars: A New […]
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With a new data run coming in 2019 at unprecedented sensitivity, we might finally get our answers. Over the past three years, LIGO discovered ten independent instances of merging black holes […]
Our Universe is 13.8 billion years old, and our Sun formed about 2/3rds of the way through. Here’s what came before it. When it comes to the great cosmic question of […]
And how cutting just $1 billion per year in funding from NASA’s budget would be a catastrophe for science. When you think of the great cosmic beyond and what we know […]
If you’re wondering whether the blast wave or the radiation would kill us first, you’re asking the wrong question. As far as raw explosive power goes, no other cataclysm in […]
A NASA-led study suggests the stress of spaceflight seems to trigger various types of herpes to reactivate in astronauts.
Trump is #45 but Pence is #48 – and other strange consequences of the curious office of vice president.
The hot Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago, and there’s no other possible answer consistent with what we know today. Conceptually, it might seem like the simplest idea in existence […]
What’s more massive than the heaviest known neutron star but lighter than the lightest known black hole? LIGO may be about to solve that mystery. Whenever a star is born in […]
Daniel Bryan is a “heel” who might sincerely believe in some of the things his persona is known to say.
What happened 4.56 billion years ago is the most important part of the cosmic story ever to happen to us. If you were to look at our Universe at the time […]
Well-lit cities and towns are essential to public safety. That doesn’t have to ruin the night sky. For most of us here on planet Earth, navigating the world at night is […]
The solar neighborhood is so different than people imagine. But for the first time, we know what it’s like. When you look up at the stars in the night sky, they […]
Psilocybin doesn’t just make you trip; it can have lasting effects on how you see the world.
Its emergence will challenge what it means to be human.
How do we see extremely short-lived stars in places that haven’t experienced star-formation in over 10 billion years? The most fundamental truth about stars is that when they run out of […]
No matter how long you wait, the matter that makes you probably won’t end up inside a black hole. It’s one of the most pervasive ideas out there: if you wait […]
If particles weren’t also waves, the Sun would never achieve nuclear fusion. Without quantum mechanics, life on Earth would never have come to exist. The greatest source of newly-produced energy in […]
Evolution doesn’t clean up after itself very well.
We know that life is possible on an Earth-like world around a Sun-like star. But can it find a way on a Super-Earth? When it comes to the origin of […]
For generations, planet formation was only a theory. As 2018 comes to an end, here’s the evidence of what’s going on. The theory of planet formation has been around for a […]
We assume that life is ubiquitous in the Universe. But what if it’s just us? When it comes to the question of extraterrestrial life, humans optimistically assume the Universe is prolific. […]
Finland and the U.S. have chosen opposing answers to the question of how much standardized testing is too much.
Sponsored by the Charles Koch Foundation.
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This meteorite is the oldest known volcanic rock in the solar system, dated at 4,565,000,000 years old.
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‘Medicare for all’, also known as Single Payer Health Care, will be hotly debated this year, and more and more U.S. voters support the idea.
A glass of juice has as much sugar, ounce for ounce, as a full-calorie soda. And those vitamins do almost nothing.
Two independent techniques give precise but incompatible answers. Here’s how to resolve it. If you didn’t know anything about the Universe beyond our own galaxy, there are two different pathways you […]
For perhaps 100 million years, there were no stars in the Universe. What was it like then? The earliest stages of the Universe were extraordinarily eventful in bringing us about. Cosmic […]