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Space Exploration
It's the best-known transcendental number of all-time, and March 14 (3/14 in many countries) is the perfect time to celebrate Pi (π) Day!
The nature of civilizational threats has changed in a mere decade.
Somewhere out there in the Universe is the heaviest neutron star, and elsewhere lies the lightest black hole. Where's the line between them?
In our Solar System, even the two brightest planets frequently align in our skies. But only rarely is it spectacularly visible from Earth.
JWST's revolutionary views arrive in high-resolution at infrared wavelengths. Without NASA's Spitzer first, it wouldn't have been possible.
The Fermi paradox (along with the subsequent Drake equation) is so difficult that even brilliant thinkers can make little dent in it.
Some of them have survived the wilds of space for billions of years.
An incredible composite image of Pandora's Cluster, Abell 2744, simultaneously showcases both our impressive knowledge and vast ignorance.
We may have discovered alien life already but rejected the evidence too quickly because it seemed false at first glance.
You can't throw a DART at everything in space.
From the Big Bang to dark energy, knowledge of the cosmos has sped up in the past century — but big questions linger.
Some microbes can withstand Earth's most inhospitable corners, hinting that life may be able to survive similarly extreme conditions on other worlds.
NASA has finally chosen which flagship mission, like Hubble and JWST, will launch in ~2040. Detecting alien life is now a reachable goal.
Air currents in our atmosphere limit the resolving power of giant telescopes, but computers and artificial stars can sharpen the blur.
We are traveling in a realm that once exclusively belonged to the gods. Space travel will force humanity to rethink everything.
A conversation with an advanced alien species is likely to be simple and to take 1,000 years. It might also be dangerous.
If life is common in the Universe, then where is everybody? Known as the Fermi Paradox, a new project may help solve the riddle.
Individual space telescopes, like Hubble and JWST, revolutionized our knowledge of the Universe. What if we had an array of them, instead?
On Earth, microbial growth is common in lava tubes no matter the location and climate, whether it’s ice-volcano interactions in Iceland or hot, sand-floored lava tubes in Saudi Arabia.
Human beings are tiny creatures compared to the 92 billion light-year wide observable Universe. How can we comprehend such large scales?
It's a radical but plausible idea.
JWST just found its first transiting exoplanet, and it's 99% the size of Earth. But with no atmosphere seen, perhaps air is truly rare.
Red dwarf stars were supposed to be inhospitable. But TOI-700, now with at least two potentially habitable worlds, is quite the exception.
JWST has seen more distant galaxies than any other observatory, ever. But many candidates for "most distant of all" are likely impostors.
Most of us have heard that the Sun is an ordinary, typical, unremarkable star. But science shows we're actually anything but average.
The authors call it "wildly theoretical" — but let's take a look, anyway.
As time goes on, dark energy makes distant galaxies recede from us ever faster in our expanding Universe. But nothing truly disappears.
2023 will see the launch of new rockets, the return of OSIRIS-REx, and a mission to Jupiter that could help us find extraterrestrial life.
Since dark matter eludes detection, the mission will target sources of light that are sensitive to it.