There are exposed planetary cores orbiting stars, and we may have already found them. When we take a look at the planets in our Solar System, there’s a pretty clear difference […]
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If we could see in three dimensions instead of two, we’d never have thought otherwise. Perhaps the most famous sight of a dying star is the Ring Nebula, discovered in […]
The Leonid meteor shower peaks today. Its parent comet taught us where meteor showers come from. Every year, as Earth regularly orbits the Sun, meteor showers repeatedly recur. While August’s Perseids […]
Trump is #45 but Pence is #48 – and other strange consequences of the curious office of vice president.
Everything is being driven apart. But there’s hope of reaching what’s currently so far away. For the first 7.8 billion years, the Universe unfolded exactly as scientists would have expected in […]
Preventable deaths for all five leading mortality causes are “consistently higher” in rural communities.
There are three possible ways we’ll find alien life. With all of these chances, the only question is which will come first. Given everything humanity has learned about the Universe, it […]
Everything on Earth is made of atoms and their building blocks. Without this one rule, they’d never make anything interesting. Take a look around you at everything on Earth. If […]
The laws of physics are not time-reversal invariant. Here’s how we know. No matter when, where, or what you are in the Universe, you experience time in only one direction: forwards. […]
Remember the announcement of a galaxy with no dark matter? It’s just been re-examined, with astounding results. In theory, all galaxies should contain copious amounts of dark matter, with one […]
Your microbiome begins in your mouth. Why don’t we look there more often?
Without this one ingredient, there wouldn’t be enough ‘glue’ to hold the Universe together. Of all the things in the Universe to be thankful for — the stars, planets, atoms, molecules, and […]
The blob that’s astonishing science gets its own exhibit.
If economic growth knowingly increases mass-scale suffering, can we stop chasing it?
Geologists may have spotted evidence of the beginning stages of a subduction zone, a process that drives the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates.
Researchers evaluated the best and worst ways to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in a recent report.
As soon as you start thinking about energy and gravity, you’ll realize the need to go beyond it. When it comes to a science like physics, theoretical expectations must always be […]
NASA’s intrepid Curiosity rolls upward into Mars history.
Maybe, but that probably doesn’t mean what you think it does. Of all the unsolved puzzles in the Universe, perhaps the most confounding is the dark matter problem. If we look […]
If galaxies are cities in the Universe, how unfortunate that our ‘cosmic country’ is dissolving. On the largest cosmic scales of all, planet Earth appears to be anything but special. […]
Black holes are regions of extreme gravity, but dark matter barely interacts at all. Do they play well together? Black holes are some of the most extreme objects in the […]
Traveling interstellar distances in human lifetimes is an amazing dream, but it won’t ever be achieved like this. For centuries, ever since we realized that every star we can see in […]
We’re living longer than ever, but few of us will save enough to afford this historical boon.
There is a fundamental difference between matter and antimatter. But not enough of one to explain our Universe. Our Universe is a vast and enormous place, and if there’s one […]
Astrophysics has probed a test of a fundamental law, ‘Lorentz invariance,’ well beyond the LHC’s limits. Einstein is still right. The greatest scientific legacy that Albert Einstein left us is this: […]
Being ahead of the curve can be a dangerous place. These 7 thinkers were driven from their homelands over it.
From anti-gravity pens to cool model kits, these space-themed gifts will make any star gazer very happy.
Sure, cosmic inflation has its detractors. But it also has something no alternative possesses: predictions and tests. Perhaps the most compelling part of any remarkable story is its origin: how it […]
One often-neglected result of climate change is ocean acidification. If this process continues, we may start to see fewer fish and more jellyfish.
Astronomy’s enduring quest is to go farther, fainter, and more detailed than ever before. Here’s the edge of the cosmic frontier. Astronomers have always sought to push back the viewable […]