Space & Astrophysics
Empty, intergalactic space is just 2.725 K: not even three degrees above absolute zero. But the Boomerang Nebula is even colder.
When we started imaging the Universe with Hubble, every star had four “spikes” coming from it. Here’s why Webb will have more.
Forty Starlink satellites were destroyed earlier this year in a geomagnetic storm.
Knowing that technology would advance in the future, NASA put some moon rock samples into storage without opening them. Now, they have.
Aerial drone footage was sent to an AI trained to track down space rocks.
The far infrared reveals both the coldest and hottest gas in the Universe, and can teach us what no other wavelength range can.
Is there any good reason for assigning North and South the way we do, or could we have just as easily done the reverse?
It rotates on its axis, revolves around the Sun, moves throughout the Milky Way, and gets carried by our galaxy all throughout space.
The laws of physics state that you can’t create or destroy matter without also creating or destroying an equal amount of antimatter. So how are we here?
60% of all potentially dangerous asteroids remain undetected.
In the night sky for March of 2022, only stars and the Moon, not planets, will greet you. The real show, however, arrives just before dawn.
Despite all that we’ve learned about the Universe, there remain unanswered, and possibly unanswerable, questions. Could “God” be the answer?
Astronomers used supercomputers and an international network of antennas to create the stunning map.
If dark matter exists in a large halo in our galaxy, made up of particles, then it’s passing through us constantly. But how much?
When we look out at the Universe, even with Hubble, we’re only seeing the closest, biggest, brightest galaxies. Here’s where the rest are.
There’s a limit to how large planets can be, and it’s only about double the radius of Jupiter. At least, so far.
The Big Bang was hot, dense, uniform, and filled with matter and energy. Before that? There was nothing. Here’s how that’s possible.
Despite being the closest planet to the Sun, Mercury “only” reaches 800 °F at its hottest. Venus is always hotter, even at night.
Professional astronomy images are the gold standard. But this Large Magellanic Cloud composite is the amateur community’s best image ever.
Our research on a Martian meteorite provides new clues about early surface conditions on the red planet.
If you think of the Big Bang as an explosion, we can trace it back to a single point-of-origin. But what if it happened everywhere at once?
Is the multiverse real? It’s one of the hottest questions in all of theoretical physics. We invited two astrophysicists to join the debate.
“When molecules misbehave, it can lead to great insight.”
Life is possible because of asymmetries, such as an imbalance between matter and antimatter and the “handedness” (chirality) of molecules.
Out of all the galaxies we know, only a few little ones are missing dark matter. At last, we finally understand why.
The odds are slim, but the consequences would be devastating. Here’s what would happen, plus how to avoid it.
Move over, IC 1101. You may be impressively large, but you never stood a chance against the largest known galaxy: Alcyoneus.
The Kardashev scale ranks civilizations from Type 1 to Type 3 based on energy harvesting.
Once science operations begin for James Webb, we’ll never look at the Universe the same way again. Here’s what everyone should know.
Nearly 200 orbital launches are scheduled for 2022.