Why are some areas redder than others? It’s what happens to methane ice in the Sun. “This is in a real sense the capstone of the initial missions to explore the […]
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The New York Times claimed that aliens must have existed at some point. But science is less certain. “There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you’ve […]
What LIGO’s first signal actually means. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have detected gravitational waves.” –David Reitze This morning, the principal investigator of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), David Reitze, made […]
An incredible live-blog of an incredible event. “It’s becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory where sufficiently extreme conditions are ever achieved to test new […]
Harvard paleoanthropologist Daniel Lieberman argues that cultural evolution is often more influential than biological evolution, leading to a host of ailments.
Earth day may have been last week, but the lessons we learned about Earth from space are with us always. “We are not learning to view ourselves as an advanced, evolving […]
See it over the coming six weeks, before it disappears and heads out of the Solar System forever. “I have worn myself thin trying to find out about this comet, and […]
And here’s the reason why, despite all you may have heard. “Thou shalt not embarrass thyself and thy colleagues by claiming false planets.” –Bill Cochran Late last year, one of the […]
LIGO is celebrating apparent confirmation of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, specifically that space and time are really one unit that exist as part of a gravitational grid.
All text involves translation. Either from reality or imagination into language, or between languages. Can the language that perfectly fit physics translate every pattern under the sun? Well, nothing in physics chooses…
Which makes you wonder what other “candidate worlds” aren’t worlds after all. “These types of systems could be ubiquitous in the universe. This is a really exciting time for planet hunters.” […]
In 30 million years, we’ll undergo star formation unlike anything else since before there were mammals on Earth. “Think about it this way — a boomerang goes out and comes back to you […]
And the method teaches us just how far Pluto is from actual planethood. “Some kind of celestial event. No — no words. No words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent […]
How the Hubble Space Telescope captured Andromeda and showed us a Universe we’ve never seen. “We are stardust, we are golden,We are billion year old carbon,And we got to get […]
Look for the bow shock, but not just in visible light! “Most people don’t know what’s happening around them because they’re just speeding through life. And before they know it, they’re […]
While a “counter-Earth” may be impossible, there are three other ways it could actually work out. “We are not like the social insects. They have only the one way of doing […]
It’s rare to find a galaxy where the arms wrap around even a full 360 degrees. But after billions of years, why is that? “The farther we peer into space, the […]
NASA is getting really serious about its mission to land humans on Mars in the 2030s.
1604 is the last time a human saw one with their naked eyes, but that wasn’t the most recent one at all. “When a star goes supernova, the explosion emits enough […]
“The Greatest” defeated all opponents when the heavyweight division was its richest. Has any physicist done the same? “The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did […]
Our Sun gets its energy from fusion in its core. But can any light be made from the surface? “Birds sing after a storm; why shouldn’t people feel as free […]
Planet Nine? More like “Planet maybe.” “Finding out that something you have just discovered is considered all but impossible is one of the joys of science.” –Mike Brown Last week, the […]
Everything else has a 5:1 dark matter-to-normal matter ratio. But get a smaller and smaller galaxy, and dark matter skyrockets! “For the moment we might very well can them DUNNOS […]
How we’ll directly take pictures of Earth-like planets in the future! “We stand on a great threshold in the human history of space exploration. If life is prevalent in our neighborhood […]
Radiophobia had the Fukushima region by the throat, so it was decided that all 360,000 or so children and teens would be offered screening for thyroid irregularities.
Einstein’s most famous equation didn’t have to be this way, but it is, all the same. “Science is global. Einstein’s equation, E=mc^2, has to reach everywhere. Science is a beautiful gift […]
It depends where you look. The answer is relatively awesome! “If everything seems under control, you’re not going fast enough.” –Mario Andretti One of Einstein’s most famous fundamental laws is that […]
And the story of how the greatest act of WWII sabotage stopped it. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” –J. Robert Oppenheimer In the 1930s, as Europe stood on […]
That our atoms come from stars? You’ve got to think bigger than that! “The older people that one admires seem to be fearless. They go right out into the world. It’s […]
They won this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics, but their legacy’s just beginning. “I know all about neutrinos, and my friend here knows about everything else in astrophysics.” –John Bahcall, […]