Designed for a 90-day mission each, dust killed the overachieving Spirit and threatens to now kill Opportunity. But it didn’t have to be this way. In 2004, NASA launched two exploration […]
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NASA’s director of science communication explains why success and failure are vague, impractical metrics to give young people.
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The ability to instantaneously jump from one location in space to another clearly violates the laws of physics. Or does it? There are a few rules in the Universe that seem […]
What does it take to become an astronaut? Retired astronaut Chris Hadfield explains, along with his vision for space exploration.
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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 […]
With 1.6 billion households in the world, how does Santa do it? With a little Christmas magic… and a lot of science! How does Santa Claus do it? In one long […]
Flat Earth theory has enjoyed staying power since at least the 19th century despite being patently untrue. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the late Carl Sagan, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and other big thinkers will show you how to disprove this bad idea, all without having to take a journey into space.
The Polar Vortex was brutal, but not compared to the rest of the Universe.
In his Big Think+ expert class The Astronaut’s Guide to Risk Mitigation, retired NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski discusses the concept, and importance of, “situationally appropriate leadership.” A rigid top-down direction may […]
Breakthrough Starshot is moving ahead with an audacious vision for space exploration.
When you have the opportunity to take gravity away from the human body, the results are pretty fasninating.
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Gravity and time are so different from what you’d expect. Here’s how it all would end. If you could only know the answer to one question about the Universe, what would […]
Forget Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, Pilot Waves and all the others. What you’re left with is reality. When it comes to understanding the Universe, scientists have traditionally taken two approaches in tandem with […]
There are a slew of Earth Science missions that NASA has planned for the future. We need all of them (and more) for a thriving planet. When most people think of […]
Getting to close to a black hole is a nightmare waiting to happen.
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Some of them were surprisingly astute.
The Planck length is a lot smaller than anything we’ve ever accessed. But is it a true limit? If you wanted to understand how our Universe operates, you’d have to examine […]
The reason why is simple, and should apply to every solar system like our own. On January 3rd, 2019, Earth reached the point in its orbit where it’s at its closest […]
The data has been taken, collected, and analyzed. So where is the first image of an event horizon, already? Across multiple continents, including Antarctica, an array of radio telescopes observe the […]
The first serious scientific study of STEVE, the ribbons of white and purple light in northern skies, reveals they’re not auroras—they’re something new and unexplained.
One of the night sky’s most famous sights isn’t what it appears to be. Perhaps the most famous sight of a dying star is the Ring Nebula, known since 1779. The […]
Is The Goblin’s orbit a breadcrumb leading us to Planet X?
It had a role in that old farmhouse…
The year was fraught to say the least. Riots in the streets, engagement abroad in a long-fought war, and an encroaching sense that the fabric that knits us together is […]
The most unusual star known has finally had its dimming scientifically explained. Here’s the unusual, dusty resolution. The science of planet-hunting has truly taken off in the 21st century, with […]
Galaxy NGC 1277 is revealed as a relic galaxy that’s barely changed since it formed 10 billion years ago, giving scientists a rare chance to look into the past.
Carl Sagan—who first coined the term—was tempted to call them “star-tar.”
Here’s the science of black holes, from supermassive monsters to ones the size of ping-pong balls.
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A new paper published in the journal American Psychologist shows how NASA is using personality research to learn what makes the best team of astronauts.
They may have arisen less than 200 million years after the Big Bang, but the Universe was a very different place back then. When you look out beyond the Milky Way […]