50% of stars are in Sun-like ‘singlet’ systems. The planetary nebulae we see just don’t line up. Around 7 billion years from now, our Sun’s life will end. As the Sun […]
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From before the Big Bang to Voyager 1, particle physicist Harry Cliff takes us on a whiz-bang tour of the Universe’s evolution.
If you think of the Big Bang as an explosion, we can trace it back to a single point-of-origin. But what if it happened everywhere at once?
And why you, a non-expert, should absolutely not consider “explaining what you know” to an actual expert in the field.
The sacrifices of early astronauts paved the way for Apollo’s successes, and so much more. In all of history, only 24 humans have ever escaped Earth’s gravity. The very first launch […]
Whenever someone waxes poetic about terraforming alien worlds, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the ethical implications of the proposal.
With advanced laser technology and an appropriate sail, we could accelerate objects to ~20% the speed of light. But would they survive?
The world needs a moral defense of progress based in humanism and agency.
The findings include signs of flash flooding that carried huge boulders downstream into the lakebed.
Thanks to a couple of rovers, we know Mars was once blue.
Even with six months’ notice, we can’t stop an incoming asteroid.
A levitating vehicle might someday explore the moon, asteroids, and other airless planetary surfaces.
Thanks to time-traveling telescopes, we can see more about the Big Bang
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50 years ago, Herman Chernoff proposed using human faces to represent multidimensional datasets. It was a good idea in theory — but a disaster in practice.
Hubble’s still going strong after 31+ years. James Webb will never make it that long. Every decision that’s made — in both astronomy and in life — comes with its own set of pros and […]
For many years, cosmologists have claimed the Universe is 13.8 billion years old. A new paper says no, it’s 26.7 billion. How do we decide?
The odds are slim, but the consequences would be literally world-ending. There really is a chance of a black hole devouring the Earth.
The nearby, bright star Fomalhaut had the first optically imaged planetary candidate. Using JWST’s eyes, astronomers found so much more.
The last 70 years have taken us farther than the previous 70,000. But can we accomplish more than creating a record saying, “We were here?”
We frequently say it’s 2.725 K: from the light left over all the way from the Big Bang. But that’s not all that’s in the Universe.
The stars, planets, and many moons are extremely round. Why don’t they take other shapes?
And the one step we can take to show extraterrestrials we’re figuring it out. Every year, Earth’s meteor showers accomplish two important tasks. This composite photograph shows a large number of […]
The authors call it “wildly theoretical” — but let’s take a look, anyway.
It may be old tech, but it’s super-reliable.
Life arose on Earth very early on. After a few billion years, here we are: intelligent and technologically advanced. Where’s everyone else?
In one experiment, the Viking landers added water to Martian soil samples. That might have been a very bad idea.
An almost 40-year-old theory finally has ‘smoking gun’ evidence for it. During most of their lives, stars burn stably, changing imperceptibly. The rotten egg nebula, at lower right (and shown in […]
The detection of two celestial interlopers careening through our solar system has scientists eagerly anticipating more.
Saturn’s Iapetus, discovered way back in 1671, has three bizarre features that science still can’t fully explain.
The contact binary system KIC 9832227 is worth another look. Astronomers have seen some incredible occurrences across space and time. The nova of the star GK Persei, shown here in an […]