Even the best science imaginable has its limits. In terms of ambition, it’s hard to ask for more than to know absolutely everything there is to know about the Universe. That’s […]

A 1060-hour amateur exposure of a nearby galaxy does what even Hubble couldn’t do. The Universe is full of astronomical wonders, but it’s up to humanity to observe and analyze them. […]

Neither one reflects the other; they’re both blue for entirely different reasons. If you’ve ever been curious about the world you live in, you’ve probably wondered why the sky is […]

The cosmic story of us wasn’t inevitable, but the culmination of many chance events. By the time our planet was four billion years old, the rise of large plants and animals […]

The two planets most suited for habitability had very different fates. At last, scientists know why. Imagine the early days of our Solar System, going back billions of years. The Sun […]

Some claim that inflation isn’t science, but it sure has made some incredibly successful scientific predictions. So, you want to know how the Universe began? You’re not alone. Every other […]

Depending on how you measure it, there are two different answers that could be right. If you want to see what’s out there in the Universe, you first have to be […]

The world’s greatest observatory can go no further with its current instrument set. The Hubble Space Telescope has provided humanity with our deepest views of the Universe ever. It has […]

Dark matter, dark energy, inflation and the Big Bang are real, and the alternatives all fail spectacularly. If you keep up with the latest science news, you’re probably familiar with […]

The small step that one man took would never have happened without this narrow escape. On July 20, 1969, history was made as humanity set foot on the Moon for the […]

It’s made up of scores of telescopes at many different sites across the world. But it acts like one giant telescope. Here’s how. If you want to observe the Universe more […]

How fast is the Universe expanding? The results might be pointing to something incredible. If you want to know how something in the Universe works, all you need to do […]

Nothing is 100% safe or 100% effective, but vaccine-hesitancy is even worse. It’s one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make in your life: do I vaccinate my child, and […]

We’re a long way from the beginnings of life on Earth. Here’s the key to how we got there. The Universe was already two-thirds of its present age by the time […]

Who should sit atop the iron throne? Let your DNA decide. Here on Earth, we hold one important truth to be self-evident above all others: that all humans are created equal. […]

Our Sun will someday run out of fuel. Here’s what it will look like when that happens. The fate of our Sun is unambiguous, determined solely by its mass. If all […]

The whole should equal the sum of its parts, but doesn’t. Here’s why. The whole is equal to the sum of its constituent parts. That’s how everything works, from galaxies to […]

It might be the biggest conundrum facing cosmology today. But perhaps it’s not a controversy; it might be a clue. https://soundcloud.com/ethan-siegel-172073460/starts-with-a-bang-44-the-expanding-universe/ One of the biggest conundrums in the Universe surrounds the […]

And why Einstein’s quest for unification was doomed from the start. If you wanted to answer the question of what’s truly fundamental in this Universe, you’d need to investigate matter and […]

Xenon-124 isn’t stable, and the direct detection of its decay could lead us to an even greater prize. Our Universe is old: 13.8 billion years old, to be precise. Many of […]

Our outer Solar System, from Jupiter to Neptune, isn’t unique after all. In the early 1990s, scientists began detecting the first planets orbiting stars other than the Sun: exoplanets. The easiest […]

Our planet is rare, precious, and fragile. It’s up to all of us to be its steward. With the advent of rocketry and spaceflight, our cosmic perspective changed forever. The very […]

If a star spins and then collapses, what happens to its angular momentum? The most common way to form a black hole in the Universe is to have a massive […]

There was a first molecule, and we found one just like it. But there’s a big difference. The Universe’s first molecule is found at last! That’s what the headlines have […]

Red, green, and blue? What we call ‘color charge’ is far more interesting than that. At a fundamental level, reality is determined by only two properties of our Universe: the quanta […]

A single thought experiment reveals a paradox. Could quantum gravity be the solution? Sometimes, if you want to understand how nature truly works, you need to break things down to […]

Now that we’ve seen our first one, we want more, and we want them better. Here’s how to get there. To resolve any astronomical object, you must achieve resolutions superior to […]

It’s the technique, from the Event Horizon Telescope, that brought us a black hole’s image. Here’s how it works. The Event Horizon Telescope has accomplished what no other telescope or telescope […]

And what do we still have left to learn? The original idea of a black hole goes all the way back to 1783, when Cambridge scientist John Michell recognized that a […]

The first image of an Event Horizon is here. Here’s what it means. Variety isn’t just the spice of life, but a natural consequence of living in our Universe. Gravitation, obeying […]