On May 9, 2016, the prior transit of Mercury occurred, and was photographed many times on a practically continuous basis by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Transits of Mercury are rare, […]

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, […]

Scientists actively researching this have known the answer for quite some time. It’s time for everyone to catch up. The Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago, and is generally regarded […]

Young galaxies are bright and blue; old galaxies are red and dead. So how did this old, red galaxy form so early? The observable Universe contains two trillion distinct galaxies, but […]

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 […]

If you think about the way a gravitational wave detector works, you might encounter a paradox. Here’s the solution. One of the greatest scientific achievements in all of human history […]

Our Universe is 13.8 billion years old, and our Sun formed about 2/3rds of the way through. Here’s what came before it. When it comes to the great cosmic question of […]

It’s been spectacularly confirmed by observation, but theoretically, it couldn’t have been any other way. If the Sun were to spontaneously cease emitting light, we wouldn’t know about it for about […]

If this newfound galaxy is just the tip of the iceberg, the entire Universe may fall into place. One of the greatest challenges for a scientist is that every time you […]

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 […]

It’s one of cosmology’s biggest unsolved mysteries. The strongest argument against it may have just evaporated. The ultimate goal of cosmology contains the greatest ambition of any scientific field: to […]

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 […]

Simply getting into grad school isn’t enough. The answers to these three questions can make all the difference. It’s time. You’ve done all your research into schools, completed your undergraduate […]

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 […]

Even though it was the crowning achievement of Einstein’s career, he was only a small part of the full story. If you were a physicist in the early 20th century, there […]

We know a lot about what else is out there, but we still don’t know everything. In the quest for life in the Universe, it makes sense to look at […]

There’s so much we don’t know about fast radio bursts and galactic halos. Combined, we get a unique window on the Universe. Deep in space, mysterious signals known as Fast […]

Every object in the Universe is constrained by the laws of physics. Does this mean there are any black holes that shouldn’t exist? When it comes to the objects that […]

If you thought the Planck satellite just made temperature maps of the cosmic microwave background, this will astound you. The Milky Way, to human eyes, appears as simply a mix of […]

With the discovery of the Higgs boson, the Standard Model is now complete. Can we be sure there isn’t another generation of particles out there? The Universe, at a fundamental level, […]

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 […]

It’s a great scientific opportunity of modern times, but we won’t get there with our current observatories. One of the holy grails of modern science is to find a world, […]

You’ve seen a black hole’s event horizon for the first time thanks to them. But they’re only getting started. Earlier this year, 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration revealed the first […]

In 1789, William Herschel discovered this unique moon around Saturn. 230 years later, its secrets are more promising than ever. Today marks the 230th anniversary of the discovery of Enceladus, one […]

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 […]

It’s the largest, most massive planet in the Solar System. But what’s the real story behind all the impacts on Jupiter? One of the most terrifying prospects here on Earth is […]

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 […]

We’re one step closer to solving the mystery of how they get so big so fast. A great cosmic mystery for science is explaining how supermassive black holes form. An ultra-distant […]

After Kepler but before James Webb, TESS is preparing astronomers for the coming exoplanet revolution. There are always new discoveries and achievements occurring in science, and certain fields have experienced […]