It’s one thing to find a galaxy that “shouldn’t exist.” It’s quite another to learn why it does. Above a certain size, spiral galaxies shouldn’t exist. A single major merger — where two […]
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NASA astronomer Michelle Thaller explains what astronomers actually do, and how can you become one.
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Scientists have found evidence of hot springs near sites where ancient hominids settled, long before the control of fire.
Two of our biggest science-fiction dreams might not remain fiction for much longer. Here’s how 21st-century science could make it real. For as long as human beings have looked up at […]
Astronomers release new data to challenge claims about the mysterious Planet Nine.
Revolutionary space technology that’ll take us into the future.
Without this one ingredient, there wouldn’t be enough ‘glue’ to hold the Universe together. Of all the things in the Universe to be thankful for — the stars, planets, atoms, molecules, and […]
Just because you have “star” in your name doesn’t mean you are one. When we think about the objects in our Universe, they fall into two categories: self-luminous objects, like stars, […]
And, if we have one, how close are we to it? No matter which direction we look in, or how far away our telescopes and instruments are capable of seeing, the […]
When it comes time for humanity to pick a new home, where will we go?
It doesn’t have to be a science-fiction dream. For as long as human beings have been watching the night sky, we’ve dreamed of visiting other worlds and truly seeing what’s […]
Scientists find that bursts of gamma rays may exceed the speed of light and cause time-reversibility.
And Dr. Jill Tarter never once lost her composure.
Even addition has to play by different rules for black holes. How do you add 28 and 47 together? This simple math question helps us highlight the many different ways that […]
Viral ‘photo’ is composite image, but other map shows true and growing size of devastation
We’re not made out of the densest elements, but we’re the densest planet nonetheless. Here’s why. Of all the planets, dwarf planets, moons, asteroids and more in the Solar System, only […]
It’s a wild idea, but there’s a way to test it. No matter how far we look out in the Universe, there’s always more “Universe” to see. Even at the extreme […]
The outer edges of a black hole might be “fuzzy” instead of neat and smooth.
After the Big Bang, merging supermassive black holes are unparalleled. Here’s how we’ll find the first one. Last week, NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory made history by announcing the most energetic explosive […]
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has been around for longer, but Saturn’s periodic storms are far larger. On Earth, hurricanes can span hundreds of kilometers, wreaking devastation whenever landfall occurs. In 2007, […]
An amateur astronomer discovers an interstellar comet on its way to our Sun.
It really is the ‘glue’ that holds the Universe together, enabling structures like our own galaxy to form in the first place. One of the most puzzling and counterintuitive facts about […]
It contains more water than all the Great Lakes combined, and the science of our planet explains why. Although practically all of Earth’s human population lives on dry land, our surface […]
As this map of Bouguer’s gravity anomaly shows, the pull of the earth varies considerably by region.
There are three factors all competing to determine the fate of the Earth, and the one that’s winning now won’t win in the end. If you could measure the average distance […]
Recent advances indicate that the idea could work.
Traveling interstellar distances in human lifetimes is an amazing dream, but it won’t ever be achieved like this. For centuries, ever since we realized that every star we can see in […]
When you look at the Universe in an entirely new way, you sometimes find what you could never have anticipated. Almost exactly one year ago today, the Event Horizon Telescope […]
Strangely, the sun showed no sunspots at the time the photo was taken.
Hidden variables aren’t ruled out, but they can’t get rid of quantum weirdness. Ever since the discovery of the bizarre behavior of quantum systems, we’ve been forced to reckon with […]