Space & Astrophysics
Over 50 years since humans last walked on the Moon, astronaut footprints and rover tracks are still visible. But they won’t last forever.
We may be the last generation born not knowing if we are alone in the Universe.
Today, our observable Universe extends for 46 billion light-years in all directions. But early on in our history, things were much smaller.
The concept of the warp drive is currently at odds with everything we know to be true about physics.
Scientists can make substantial progress without fully understanding exactly what they’re doing.
The giant impact theory suggests our Moon was formed from proto-Earth getting a Mars-sized strike. An exoplanet system shows it’s plausible.
For many years, cosmologists have claimed the Universe is 13.8 billion years old. A new paper says no, it’s 26.7 billion. How do we decide?
If you’ve found yourself befuddled by extraordinary scientific-sounding claims, you’re not alone. But this centuries-old lesson can help.
What are supermassive black holes, how common are they, and how do they grow up throughout cosmic history? Listen and find out!
The separation of pleasure from procreation may occur throughout the cosmos, providing an explanation for the Fermi Paradox.
A Harvard astronomer went to the bottom of the ocean, claiming he recovered alien technology. But what does the science actually indicate?
The space telescope’s findings challenge the notion of a galaxy brimming with life.
From the present day all the way to less than 400 million years after the Big Bang, we’re seeing how the Universe grew up like never before.
Get ready for the most peculiar road trip that will help you understand the vastness and emptiness of the solar system — and Sweden.
Some 55 million light-years away lies the giant galaxy Messier 87. Its supermassive black hole, inside and out, looks better than ever.
But it’s still challenging to build a 22,000-mile elevator.
Headlines have blared that quasar ticking confirms that time passed more slowly in the early Universe. That’s not how any of this works.
For thousands of years, we puzzled at how far away the Moon was. Today we know its distance, at any time, to within millimeters.
While Saturn and its moons all appear faint and cloudy to JWST, Saturn’s rings are the star of the show. Here’s the big scientific reason.
Lost in a building or underwater? A new muon-based navigation system could be your guide.
There’s an entire Universe out there. So, with all that space, all those planets, and all those chances at life, why do we all live here?
After 15 years of monitoring 68 objects known as millisecond pulsars, we’ve found the Universe’s background gravitational wave signal!
Michael Faraday’s 1834 law of induction was the key experiment behind the eventual discovery of relativity. Einstein admitted it himself.
In one experiment, the Viking landers added water to Martian soil samples. That might have been a very bad idea.
A cute mathematical trick can “rescale” the Universe so that it isn’t actually expanding. But can that “trick” survive all our cosmic tests?
In a distant galaxy, a cosmic dance between two supermassive black holes emits periodic flashes of light.
As the Earth spins and wobbles on its axis and revolves elliptically around the Sun, each day changes from the last. “24 hours” isn’t right.
Particles behave differently when freed from the force of gravity. A new space factory aims to use this to synthesize pharmaceuticals.
The farther away they get, the smaller distant galaxies look. But only up to a point, and beyond that, they appear larger again. Here’s how.
From a photon’s viewpoint, the Universe is timeless and dimensionless.