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Despite Betelgeuse’s recent faintening and brightening, I’d bet on these stars instead. Betelgeuse, a nearby red supergiant, will someday explode. The black hole at the center of the Milky Way should […]

The organisms were anchored to a boulder 900 meters beneath the ice, living a cold, dark existence miles away from the open ocean.

At its biggest for the next 15 years, it’s still much smaller than the Moon. On October 6, 2020, Mars makes its closest approach to Earth until 2035. Earth orbits in […]

Science doesn’t exist in a cultural and existential vacuum and its teaching shouldn’t either.

If we’re migrating slowly away, is our speed changing, too? Every year, planet Earth completes one revolution around the Sun while spinning on its axis. On a year-to-year basis, our […]

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 […]

I’m not saying it’s not aliens, but it’s not aliens. When it comes to life in the Universe, we still have no definitive answer to the biggest question of all, “are […]

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 […]

Even with leap years and long-term planning, our calendar won’t be good forever. Here’s why, and how to fix it.

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 […]

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. […]

Named M51-ULS-1b, it’s certainly a curious astronomical event. But the evidence is far too weak to conclude “planet.”

The Moon, Venus, and Jupiter are the brightest night sky objects. On Thursday evening, November 28, they’ll all align, plus Saturn, too. As the planets orbit the Sun throughout the year, […]

The view from beyond Pluto is far enough from Earth that we can see the stars shift. NASA’s New Horizons, humanity’s first spacecraft to encounter Pluto, is more than 4.3 billion […]

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 […]

Without quantum physics, the Sun wouldn’t shine at all. Earth, as we know it, is only teeming with life because of the influence of our Sun. Its light and heat provides […]

We’ve already observed three cases where it’s happened. When you look at an object in space, it’s pretty easy to tell if it’s a star or a planet. Stars are […]

If our nearest star has an Earth-like planet, here’s how we’ll see it. As seen from up close, the signs of not only life, but our intelligent, technologically advanced human civilization […]

Whether they’re gas giants or rocky planets makes all the difference for life. Over the past 30 years, we went from not knowing if there were planets like ours around other […]

Leap years will only get us through the next few thousand years before we have to fix it. With every year that passes, we assume that two separate things will both […]

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has been around for longer, but Saturn’s periodic storms are far larger. On Earth, hurricanes can span hundreds of kilometers, wreaking devastation whenever landfall occurs. In 2007, […]

A tiny layer of microscopic dust is the only reason it appears red. When we look out at our planet Earth from space, we see a myriad of diverse colors. The […]

We’re not made out of the densest elements, but we’re the densest planet nonetheless. Here’s why. Of all the planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids and more in the Solar System, only […]

The flying rotorcraft drone is set to land on Saturn’s largest moon in 2034.

We’ve come fantastically far in our understanding of the distant Universe. Here’s how we’ll go even farther. Sometime in 2021, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will launch, deploy, and begin science […]

Scientists speculate that if life were to have spontaneously developed on Earth, the first thing there would need to be are vesicles.

The intelligent life we are searching for doesn’t have to be humanoid.

Find a clear western horizon after sunset, and this ‘triple treat’ of a dance can be yours. Every once in a while, the night sky provides a spectacular feast for our […]

Conjunctions this close are rare, but give humanity an opportunity to view our Solar System’s faintest planet. With eight planets orbiting our Sun, any two will eventually appear close together from […]

A historic NASA probe sends back a treasure-trove of information from billions of miles away.