Researchers find an unexpected side effect of rising carbon dioxide levels in a remote tropical forest.
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It isn’t just for merging neutron stars, anymore. Over the past three years, there’s arguably been no greater scientific discovery than the direct detection of gravitational waves. The two LIGO […]
Trash on earth is pretty bad. But space trash is at a whole other level.
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Mining asteroids might seem like the stuff of science fiction, but there are companies and a few governments already working hard to make it real.
Of all the experiments performed and measurements made involving fundamental particles, none has ever violated the Standard Model. Until now. If there’s one thing you can count on physicists for, it’s […]
Every physical theory has constants in it. The gravitational constant is remarkably uncertain. When we first began formulating physical laws, we did so empirically: through experiments. Drop a ball off […]
From millions of miles to millions of light years, there’s nothing else that leaves trails like this. When you point your telescope at the distant Universe, observing a faint, massive object […]
For the first time, an object from outside our solar system is observed traveling through our neighborhood.
For most of us, it’s something we just accept every year. But there’s arguably no good that comes from it. Every year on the second Sunday in March, most places in […]
In a sense, a proton acts very much like a star.
Before Hawking, black holes were just static points in the background of space. His greatest scientific legacy taught us just how dynamic they are. In 1915, Albert Einstein published his General […]
What are the health and environmental effects of electric night light?
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 […]
The NASA probe to Saturn went out in a blaze of glory last week.
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If atmospheric hazes can cool the distant ice dwarf by an extra 30 degrees Celsius, maybe we can geoengineer a solution to our warming problem? When NASA’s New Horizons flew by […]
While the Patriots battle the Eagles during Super Bowl LII, asteroid AJ129 is flying pretty close to Earth, cosmically speaking. But how close exactly will it be, and should you be concerned?
Spoiler: it isn’t the end of the Universe, and it’s not likely to lead to new evidence for the Multiverse, either. On March 14, 2018, the most famous and celebrated […]
Planets can ‘discover’ nuclear power on their own, naturally, without any intelligence. Earth did it 1.7 billion years before humans. If you were hunting for alien intelligence, looking for a surefire […]
But if a radical new idea comes to fruition, maybe we can find them after all. After decades of planning, building, prototyping, upgrading, and calibrating, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) […]
The neutron star-neutron star merger was initially only seen in 1 detector out of 3. Here’s how scientists didn’t let it slip away. On August 17th, 2017, a gravitational wave event […]
Why do great minds argue for positions we find repulsive? Today, we find out why Robert Nozick was a libertarian.
Whatever you do, don’t try to wash it away with water. Every few months, a volcanic eruption occurs on Earth, with lava flows and enormous plumes of volcanic ash. In 2015, […]
If the gravity isn’t where the matter is, things get into trouble very, very quickly. The above image, a composite of optical data, X-ray data, and a reconstructed mass map, is […]
With a 5-10 year warning, we could develop a plan to change an asteroid’s trajectory.
NASA discovers a surprisingly dark planet about 1,400 light years away.
There’s so much that we’ve discovered, looking as deeply as possible into the void. But what are we missing? Start with the laws of physics, a Universe full of a specific […]
Mike Hughes finally launched his homemade rocket 1,875 feet into the sky. Now, the 61-year-old has plans to build another rocket to go even higher…
They’re less than a billion years old. And, thanks to ALMA, they might finally pave the way to understanding how galaxies form. How do galaxies like our Milky Way come to […]
Dark energy means that the Universe’s expansion is accelerating. But how big will it get, and how fast? Our Universe, as we observe it today, is a vast, enormous place, full […]
An eruption from a supervolcano could be catastrophic. Here’s NASA’s plan and how sensible it is.