Now that we know the closest star has a potentially habitable planet, it’s time to ask if it’s really like ours. “To consider the Earth as the only populated world in […]
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It’s actually better to not catch that extra light. Here’s why. “A mouse does not rely on just one hole.” –Plautus If you want to see farther, deeper and more […]
Occasionally, a star will blow off its outer layers in a sphere. The vast majority don’t, and ours probably won’t, either. “The self-same atoms which, chaotically dispersed, made the nebula, now, […]
The gravitational waves were real. But earlier announcements that X-rays and gamma-rays were detected, too? Not so much. “What’s really exciting is what comes next. I think we’re opening a window […]
How we’ll directly take pictures of Earth-like planets in the future! “We stand on a great threshold in the human history of space exploration. If life is prevalent in our neighborhood […]
Images credit: New York Times, 10 November 1919 (L); Illustrated London News, 22 November 1919 (R). If the cloud situation had played out differently, the United States might have confirmed […]
Something isn’t right about the Universe without something extra. So why can’t scientists agree on what that “extra” thing is? “All we know so far is what doesn’t work.” –Richard Feynman […]
For the central 8,000 light years, there are practically no tracers of new stars. What gives? “This suggests a lack of Cepheids in the inner 2.5 kpc region of the Galactic […]
And could what we see over there spell disaster for Earth? “An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered […]
“Eureka!” is not always as powerful as “that’s what I thought!” “Reality is what kicks back when you kick it. This is just what physicists do with their particle accelerators. […]
Solar flares may have created the conditions that led to life on earth.
Even if the Universe grows to infinity, there might not be enough space to hold all the possibilities. “We are actually living in a million parallel realities every single minute.” –Marina […]
The Orion Nebula demonstrates the answer. “So numerous are the objects which meet our view in the heavens, that we cannot imagine a point of space where some light would not […]
By devising the first truly brilliant physics experiment, Galileo gave us the equations of motion we still use today. “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point […]
It’s an old idea made new again, but it just might fall apart. “[The black hole] teaches us that space can be crumpled like a piece of paper into an infinitesimal […]
Including the most massive star ever discovered in the Universe. “The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one;Yet the light of the bright world dies with the […]
How the biggest NASA mission of the decade will solve some of the Universe’s greatest mysteries. “Now the world has gone to bed,Darkness won’t engulf my head,I can see by […]
Today’s video is part of a series on female genius, in proud collaboration with 92Y’s 7 Days of Genius Festival.
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Everything depends on it, and yet we don’t know it as well as we’d like! “Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have […]
How the Hubble Space Telescope captured Andromeda and showed us a Universe we’ve never seen. “We are stardust, we are golden,We are billion year old carbon,And we got to get […]
Or can moving at relativistic speeds through a general relativistic Universe change everything? “Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard, there’s nothing you can […]
A new idea links the Standard Model’s most elusive particles with the zero-point energy of the Universe. “If you’re puzzled by what dark energy is, you’re in good company.” –Saul […]
If the Universe is infinite and full of stars and galaxies, why can’t we see something everywhere we look? “When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead […]
200 meteors per hour is only three per minute, and with a more-than-half full moon out, you might want to stay inside. “My dad took me out to see a meteor […]
Neither astronomers nor native Hawaiians are to blame, but it’s up to everyone to get it right moving forward. “The cause of Hawaiian independence is larger and dearer than the life […]
How the darkest places on the sky unexpectedly house the closest new stars. “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will […]
“Scanning for signs of life” is a staple of science fiction. Could it be science, too? This post was written by Jillian Scudder. Jillian is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Astrophysics […]
How the future of astronomy — and something we can’t even see — might open up the dark Universe. This post is written by Sabine Hossenfelder, a theoretical physicist specialized in quantum gravity & […]
The massive black holes that formed LIGO’s first event were a surprise, and then a mystery. Here’s the long-awaited solution! “Black holes can bang against space-time as mallets on a […]
The strongest pull for hundreds of millions of light years goes toe-to-toe against the most energetic force of all. “We detect motion along this axis, but right now our data cannot […]