Every star dies, but not every would-be star really lives. “The origin and evolution of life are connected in the most intimate way with the origin and evolution of the stars.” […]
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The most revelatory answers in life come from complex, diverse populations. Technology can open our eyes to what we’re missing and destroy our subconscious biases in one fell swoop.
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For the first time, we’ve seen neutron stars merge. At last, the gravitational and electromagnetic sky are one. “It’s becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory […]
There have been some interesting “sightings” in the news these days.
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Here on Earth, all the right conditions occurred for intelligent life to come about, but the nearest aliens, if they’re on another world, are light years away. But it doesn’t […]
Need more astronomical phenomena in your life? We’ve got you covered.
The event horizon is real, and we know it without even needing to see it directly. “Where we’re going, we won’t need eyes to see.” –Sam Neill, Event Horizon If […]
The Cassini-Huygens telescope has spent the better part of the last two decades finding out more about our galaxy than we could possibly dream of. Here’s 14 of the coolest things it has found out.
The first stars formed almost half a billion years before we could see their light. Here’s why. At the moment of the Big Bang, the Universe was full of matter and […]
The Omega Nebula, the Eagle Nebula and Sharpless 2–54 all line up in space. Here’s a never-before-seen view of them all together! “It shows you exactly how a star is […]
Three eyes are so much better than two. Here’s why. “Einstein’s gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest single achievement of theoretical physics, resulted in beautiful relations connecting gravitational […]
Even our scientific heroes can’t be right about everything. Let’s learn the lessons that they never did. In the 1960s, a young theoretical physicist named Stephen Hawking rose to prominence as […]
Never heard of SKA, the square kilometer array? Once it starts taking data, you’ll never forget it. “Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for […]
In the far future, the last star burns out, stellar corpses get violently ejected, and galaxies accelerate away. And then the fun begins. For centuries, the biggest questions about our Universe […]
We’ve come so far since 2015; what do we know about dark matter now that we didn’t know then? Back in 2015, the dark matter situation was pretty straightforward: the large-scale […]
There’s nothing new, recent, or remarkable about it. It’s just a typical cosmic pebble in the galactic ocean. Last year, the interstellar interloper ʻOumuamua passed through the inner Solar System. Originally […]
This could change everything we know about gravity and universal expansion.
Cosmic collision yields bullion by the billions.
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A machine learning algorithm has shown it can discover planets from weak signals overlooked in the Kepler spacecraft’s database.
Researchers said this feat concludes “one of the major challenges in modern cosmology.”
“We’re opening up a whole new territory of astronomy,” One NASA official said.
The first detections were incredible. But now the real fun — and the real science — truly begins. On August 17, the signals from two merging neutron stars reached Earth after a journey of 130 […]
We’ve never seen an event horizon, nor directly imaged a black hole. Thanks to a worldwide effort, victory may at last be in sight. “Never look down to test the ground […]
Astronomers make the first direct observation of a phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
IFLS might be fun for the armchair enthusiast, but couldn’t you have at least consulted an expert? “You were always a good officer. Until you weren’t.”–Saru, from Star Trek: Discovery With […]
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 […]
There’s another safe way to observe the “Great American Eclipse,” too.
Alpha Centauri A and B are just 4.37 light years away. Do they have planets around them? And possibly life? We just might find out! “Resources exist to be consumed. And […]
These scientists scooped up the Nobel by detecting a ripple in space-time.
Its 18 large, segmented golden mirrors aren’t even the whole story. But how much gold is really in there? “Hey, if our eyes could access the infrared part of the light […]