If you think of the Big Bang as an explosion, we can trace it back to a single point-of-origin. But what if it happened everywhere at once?
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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 […]
New study of gamma rays and gravitational lensing points to the possible presence of dark matter.
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 […]
It might have been Einstein’s greatest blunder, but it’s our leading theory today. One of the most mysterious components in the entire Universe is dark energy, which — if we’re being honest with […]
Roger Penrose used mathematics to show black holes actually exist. Andrea Ghez and Reinhard Genzel helped uncover what lies at the center of our galaxy.
If you go young, blue, and massive, you top out at 50,000 K. That’s peanuts! Surprise! The biggest, most massive stars aren’t always the hottest. Although its neighbor, Messier 42, […]
The new record-holder opens up a literal Universe full of possibilities. Someday, even our own Sun will eventually run out of hydrogen fuel in its core, bringing a tremendous set […]
It comes from a supernova seen just 33 years ago, and it doesn’t pulse. 33 years ago, a supernova occurred just 168,000 light-years from Earth. This new image of the supernova […]
The Ultra-Deep and eXtreme Deep Fields have revealed the Universe as never before. Here’s what lies inside. From 2003 through 2014, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope observed the same tiny region across […]
The original Hubble Deep Field truly showed us what the Universe looks like. Later this month, the Hubble Space Telescope will celebrate its 30th anniversary. This photo of the Hubble Space […]
The origin of the 3rd element on the periodic table was one of the great cosmic mysteries. We just solved it. How did we form the elements that pervade the Universe […]
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 […]
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 […]
It’s not just about SpaceX and Starlink. What we’re deciding today will have a global impact for years and decades to come. For countless millennia, human beings have gazed up into […]
Only 17 years after its discovery have we learned we’re safe from asteroid Apophis. Ever since its 2004 discovery, asteroid 99942 Apophis has threatened planet Earth. Asteroid Apophis has been measured […]
Out of all the galaxies we know, only a few little ones are missing dark matter. At last, we finally understand why.
A new study discovers how blazars shoot out jets of radiation towards Earth.
At just 3 solar masses, it eliminates the “mass gap.” Searching for black holes is one of the most difficult astronomical games a scientist can play. Emitting no light of their […]
Every December, the Geminid meteor shower reaches its peak. Its 2021 show will be spectacular, but only if you do it right.
Historically, periods of mass flourishing are underpinned by technological revolutions. Currently, we are undergoing a technological revolution unlike anything the world has ever seen.
With advanced laser technology and an appropriate sail, we could accelerate objects to ~20% the speed of light. But would they survive?
From before the Big Bang to the present day, the Universe goes through many eras. Dark energy heralds the final one.
NASA’s New Horizons is the most distant technologically advanced observatory ever. And that makes all the difference. When you look at an object that’s very distant from you, how well […]
It’s how successful our current theories are. Some 500 years ago, there was one scientific phenomenon that was, without controversy, extremely well-understood: the motion of the celestial objects in the sky. […]
For northern hemisphere skywatchers, it might just be the century’s best comet so far. Every once in a while, large, icy objects pass through the inner Solar System. C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) […]
Astronomers find these five chapters to be a handy way of conceiving the universe’s incredibly long lifespan.
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 […]
We just found the first one within 1,000 light-years of us. But there’s probably one much, much closer. For a long time, black holes were known to exist only in the […]
A black hole punched a hole 15 Milky Ways across in a galaxy cluster’s gas, by far the largest ‘kaboom’ ever seen. The Universe, everywhere we look, is full of cataclysmic […]