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Philosophy
Examine life’s biggest questions, from ethics to existence, with curiosity and critical thinking.
The most famous ‘supernova impostor’ of all could have died back in the 1840s. Here’s what we think kept it alive. In all of astronomy, no stellar event releases more energy […]
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 […]
Even before MMA was a combat sport, it was a unique type of astronomy. Today, it’s opening up the Universe as never before. On February 24, 1987, a spectacular signal was […]
When you hear ‘quantum,’ you probably think of splitting everything into discrete, indivisible chunks. That’s not necessarily right. If you want to learn what the Universe is made out of […]
A theoretical view of a distant world so far from our Sun that our Solar System appears barely brighter than the remaining stars in the sky. ( Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)) Pluto […]
It might seem puzzling, in a Universe bound by the speed of light, that this could be true. Here’s the science behind it. If you look out into the distant Universe, […]
There are a lot of unsolved mysteries in the Universe, but dark energy is the most confusing. Here’s why. The majority of the energy in our Universe went completely undiscovered until […]
Forget about alien nonsense. The Universe as it actually is doesn’t need any embellishments to be interesting. In our Solar System, the planets, moons, asteroids, comets and other masses are […]
100+ years ago, General Relativity came along, and Einstein gave the Universe a cosmological constant. Here’s why that was a mistake. Back in the 17th century, Isaac Newton put forth the […]
The origin story for our Universe got a major revision nearly 40 years ago. Time to catch up. 13.8 billion years ago, all the matter and energy contained within our Universe […]
If you think that the Moon is only good for reflecting sunlight, you’ve got another think coming. To human eyes, the Moon is the second brightest visible object, trailing only the […]
Or, quite possibly, is it more complex than either one of those scenarios? If there’s one lesson that humanity should have learned from the 20th century, it’s this: the Universe […]
A recent headline claimed they could. But if gamma-rays are just a form of light, don’t they have to travel at light-speed? There’s an ultimate speed limit in the Universe: […]
She’s not a scientist, an expert, or even an adult. But she’s got one good lesson to teach us all. Like most people on Earth, Greta Thunberg is not a climate […]
As more data comes in, the puzzle gets deeper and deeper. Whenever you set out to solve a problem, there are a series of steps you have to take in order […]
You might think that we live in a three dimensional Universe based on space alone. But you cannot leave time out of it. If you were asked to describe how you […]
Electron-positron or proton-proton colliders are all the rage. But the unstable muon might be the key to unlocking the next frontier. If you want to probe the frontiers of fundamental […]
The darkness of the night sky was a mystery for generations of humans. Here’s the reason why. From our perspective here in the Solar System, it makes absolute intuitive sense why […]
And one of our planets has the orbiting moons to prove it. Despite the dangers posed to planet Earth by a comet or asteroid strike, our Solar System is actually an […]
The top of Mauna Kea is the ideal physical site for this new, ready-to-be-built telescope. But that’s far from the only concern. For many years, astronomers have looked forward to a […]