Just because humans wouldn’t do well over there doesn’t mean there aren’t incredible chances for life. For nearly 30 years, scientists have been discovering planets beyond our Solar System: the exoplanets […]
Search Results
You searched for: Mercury
The Planetary Habitability Laboratory has made up some periodic tables of all of the confirmed and suspected exoplanets so far, plus planetary bodies in our own solar system.
Nothing can escape from a black hole… but could another black hole pull something out? Once you fall into the event horizon of a black hole, you can never escape. […]
Just one equation relates the expansion of space to all the matter and energy we have. If you know this, you can know the fate of the Universe. Last week, […]
Humanity has mapped the Milky Way better than ever with ESA’s Gaia. But 1.7 billion stars later, there are still no Dyson spheres. Perhaps the greatest ‘holy grail’ in all of […]
As scary as it may seem, Bryan Cranston was deeply informed by personal experience in how he approached Walter White, the character he played on the hit television program “Breaking Bad.”
▸
10 min
—
with
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 […]
For Women’s History Month we have a list of seven all women teams who changed history. Some were scientists, some soldiers, some living, and some long gone. All of them shaped the world.
This isn’t an XZibit joke; it’s a real scientific question. And the answer may be that it’s possible after all. “People who work every day are kind of scared of things […]
The most elusive naked-eye planet is downright impossible to view for billions of us on Earth. “I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without […]
Sex is everywhere in Greek and Roman art.
There are many arguments over what makes a theory beautiful, elegant, or compelling. But in the face of data, predictive power is everything. When you look at any phenomenon in […]
If space were really curved due to matter and energy, we should see light deflect. A solar eclipse provides the perfect opportunity. “Eddington had needed to make significant corrections to […]
For every planet that orbits a star like our own, there are likely thousands of ‘orphan planets’ wandering the galaxy alone. Here in the Solar System, we can watch our star’s […]
Anti-vaxers have some questions about vaccine safety, here we give the answers.
A machine learning algorithm has shown it can discover planets from weak signals overlooked in the Kepler spacecraft’s database.
It isn’t the rapture or some crazy prophesy, but science, that tells us when and how the end will come. “The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic […]
Watch what it might look like to travel from the sun to Jupiter at the speed of light.
Did you experience totality? I did, for the first time. And it was, even as a well-prepared scientist, beyond anything I expected. “All that is nowAll that is goneAll that’s […]
Totality is a time to look at the eclipsed Sun, enjoy, and marvel at it. But for photographers, there’s even more in store. “Having totality means being capable of following ‘what […]
When you’re confronted by some new information, how do you tell whether it’s valid or not? “I’m old enough to remember when the polio vaccine was still new. Also, it hadn’t […]
A Silicon Valley investor is spending millions on a publicity campaign aimed specifically at Elon Musk.
How to stay safe and prepare yourself for the show of a lifetime! “Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse […]
Historian Alfred McCoy explains why American power is coming to an end and lays out his vision for the new global order.
It isn’t just supernovae or merging neutron stars. In fact, it’s the quietest way of all! “N6946-BH1 is the only likely failed supernova that we found in the first seven years […]
For the first time, the gravitational wave sky and the astronomical sky might be coming together. It’s a new era, at long last. “Presently thought to be the most powerful explosions […]
More massive is bigger, less massive is smaller, right? That’s not even half the story. “Billions of years from now our sun, then a distended red giant star, will have reduced […]
Think the periodic table is complicated? Now learn how each element in it was created. “It is the function of science to discover the existence of a general reign of order […]
The pulsar map to Earth was perfect when it was launched. By time aliens get it, it’ll be completely useless. “We [are] a species endowed with hope and perseverance, at […]
There’s a lot to learn about other worlds, but you can’t learn it all without looking up. “One should not need a teleportation device to decide whether a newly discovered object […]