The Leonid meteor shower peaks today. Its parent comet taught us where meteor showers come from. Every year, as Earth regularly orbits the Sun, meteor showers repeatedly recur. While August’s Perseids […]
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The nature of our quantum Universe is puzzling, counterintuitive, and testable. The results don’t lie. Although our intuition is an incredibly useful tool for navigating daily life, developed from a lifetime […]
Discovered by NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory, it’s powered by a supermassive black hole. 2019 marks 20 years of NASA’s Chandra, humanity’s most powerful X-ray observatory. Artist illustration of the Chandra X-ray […]
You’d be amazed at what you can learn from even one single pixel. Over the past decade, owing largely to NASA’s Kepler mission, our knowledge of planets around star systems beyond […]
From anti-gravity pens to cool model kits, these space-themed gifts will make any star gazer very happy.
We can explore the farthest reaches of the Universe, but can’t even complete our own cosmic backyard. The history of astronomy has been a history of receding horizons. The invention […]
The large-scale study got it right for 83 percent of participants. Would you take the blood test?
When stars get ejected from galaxies within massive clusters, they go where the dark matter is. Dark matter is one of the greatest mysteries in the Universe, displaying its effects in […]
If a star spins and then collapses, what happens to its angular momentum? The most common way to form a black hole in the Universe is to have a massive […]
Scientists examined data from 20 years ago to reach a startling new conclusion.
At the core of the largest star-forming region of the Local Group sits the biggest star we know of. Mass is the single most important astronomical property in determining the lives […]
It will be the most extreme test of Einstein’s General Relativity ever. And we already have the data. With every year that goes by, the total amount of knowledge that humanity […]
There was a first molecule, and we found one just like it. But there’s a big difference. The Universe’s first molecule is found at last! That’s what the headlines have […]
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 […]
Today, our observable Universe extends for 46 billion light-years in all directions. But early on, things were much smaller. There are few things we can conceive of that are as mind-bogglingly […]
The 40th edition of the Starts With A Bang Podcast features Astronomer John O’Meara, the first pristine matter ever seen, and a 15-meter space telescope proposal! One of the great […]
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 […]
If your goal was to destroy the science of astronomy and astrophysics, this is exactly how you’d do it. One of the perks of being President of the United States of […]
It has already found several bizarre planets outside of our solar system.
From Newton to today’s scientists, we’re only seeing part of the story unfold.
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, […]
Imagine how different our understanding of the Universe would be if we saw nothing beyond the Milky Way. Our corner of the Universe was gifted with a plethora of bright, nearby […]
After the Big Bang, merging supermassive black holes are unparalleled. Here’s how we’ll find the first one. Last week, NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory made history by announcing the most energetic explosive […]
In 2017, we saw gravitational waves a neutron star merger for the first and only time. And it keeps getting more interesting. On August 17, 2017, a cosmic signal arrived […]
Between Carl Sagan’s laughter, the brainwaves of somebody in love, and a live theremin concert, humanity has sent a lot of data out into the stars.
Hubble captures the afterglow of an epochal blast.
From one serendipitously fortunate system, we gain a new window into the expanding Universe’s biggest conundrum. We’ve known our Universe is expanding for ~90 years, yet unsolved mysteries persist. The […]
It’s a great time to be an astrobiologist—and for all of us to be asking, “Are we alone?”
Have you ever wanted to: see the southern skies? visit the best resort on the South American continent? explore the Atacama desert? see the world’s most powerful radio telescope array? […]