You’ve probably seen it hanging around. But how did it get there? And can we live there?
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Theoretical work tells you where to look, but only experiments can reveal what you’ll find. There are fundamental mysteries out there about the nature of the Universe itself, and it’s our […]
The picture itself is breathtaking. But what we learn is truly eye-opening. Galaxy clusters, like the massive one captured here by Hubble, PLCK G004.5–19.5, impress not just for their looks, […]
If all you see is low-energy light in a myriad of directions, you can’t be sure. But this light comes from the Big Bang. There are a lot of things that […]
While the web of dark matter (purple) might seem to determine cosmic structure formation on its own, the feedback from normal matter (red) can severely impact galactic scales. Both dark […]
The current record-holder is a doozy, and right at the limit of what Hubble can do. But there’s even more out there. The greatest advances in science often come when we […]
It will take further study to confirm the star’s iron influx came from a planet or two, but the initial theory is quite compelling.
Astronomers were using images taken by Hubble Space Telescope to study a supernova when they detected an unusually strong source of light later determined to be a star.
Bright pink? Lava? Liquid planets that could hold water? Some far-out planets are truly… out of this world.
The heaviest elements in the periodic table have their own unique story. No, they don’t come from a supernova. When it comes to the elements of the Universe, every one […]
An asteroid about the size of a New York City block is flying between the Earth and the Moon today. How close, though?
What happened 4.56 billion years ago is the most important part of the cosmic story ever to happen to us. If you were to look at our Universe at the time […]
The legacy of what humanity’s greatest telescope has to teach us about the Universe continues to grow. Here in the Universe, in the Milky Way and beyond, new stars are birthed […]
What do hot dogs, the Vatican, and the Large Hadron Collider have in common? They’re all in our random fact roundup where we bring you some favorite facts about three subjects.
If everything goes right, astronomy will take a magnificent leap into the future. But here’s what needs to happen first. Back in 2000, NASA held their decadal survey, choosing what would […]
Good news for space exploration?
Shortly after the Big Bang, the Universe became completely dark. The first stars, when they ignited, changed everything. For perhaps 100 million years, the Universe was devoid of stars. The […]
Gravity gets weaker as the distance squared. But gravitational waves only get weaker as the distance. Why? One of the things we often just accept about the world is that […]
Scientists pick up signals from an explosion of electromagnetic energy that occurred when a black hole ripped apart a passing star.
Our understanding of the universe has expanded tremendously in the last few decades. But there are still some mysteries out there, and the Great Attractor is one of them.
In 1987, we detected neutrinos from another galaxy in a supernova. After a 30 year wait, we’ve found something even better. One of the great mysteries in science is determining not […]
Sometimes, the biggest answers to the deepest questions come in the most unexpected of places. In the Solar System, anything out past Neptune is generally considered to be the outer reaches […]
The expanding Universe really is accelerating, and no dusty scenario can explain it. 20 years ago, our understanding of the Universe underwent a revolution. For generations, we had known the Universe […]
The ‘giant impact’ that led to Earth might not have been so giant, after all. A little over 4.5 billion years ago, our Solar System began to form. Somewhere in the […]
Not building one means giving up on brute force. We’re not yet ready to do that. There’s a problem with the field of high-energy physics, and it’s the biggest one imaginable. […]
LIGO, here on Earth, has exquisitely-precise distances its lasers travel. With three spacecrafts in motion, how could LISA work? Since it began operating in 2015, advanced LIGO has ushered in an […]
For perhaps 100 million years, there were no stars in the Universe. What was it like then? The earliest stages of the Universe were extraordinarily eventful in bringing us about. Cosmic […]
The chances of an asteroid large enough to be a threat to areas where human beings are concentrated are small. Still, it’s what’s known as a “high impact” result.
Really puts the whole “don’t give up until you’re dead” thing to shame.
All the planets, asteroids, and Kuiper belt objects out there all point to the same conclusion: it’s giant impacts or no moons at all. Out of all the rocky planets […]