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Astronomy
All stars shine due to an internal source of energy. Usually, it's nuclear fusion: converting mass into energy. What makes them most bright?
What happens when scientists "write what they know"? Some amazing science fiction stories.
Photons come in every wavelength you can imagine. But one particular quantum transition makes light at precisely 21 cm, and it's magical.
A Cambridge-based team claims to find molecules on an exoplanet that are only produced by life on Earth. Don't fall for the unfounded hype.
In all the known Universe, Earth is the only planet known to have native life. What should guide us in expanding humanity beyond our world?
Perhaps no existential question looms larger than that of our ultimate cosmic origins. At long last, science has provided the answers.
The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, was originally seen as a colossal mistake. This one image, taken in 1995, changed everything.
Planets can create nuclear power on their own, naturally, without any intelligence or technology. Earth already did: 1.7 billion years ago.
The most famous Hubble images show glittering stars and galaxies amidst the black backdrop of space. But more was captured than we realized.
In around 7 billion years, we expect the Sun to run out of fuel, dying in a planetary nebula/white dwarf combination. Is that for certain?
Exoplanets can exist anywhere around their parent stars, even so close that they evaporate or disintegrate. Even the rocky ones.
It's difficult to project a sphere onto a flat, two-dimensional surface. All maps of the Earth have flaws; the same is true for the cosmos.
We understand many things about our Universe, and our home within it, extremely well. The number of stars in the Milky Way isn't among them.
Large, massive, rotating galaxies like the Milky Way are common today. So how could one form a mere ~2 billion years after the Big Bang?
For centuries, even after we knew the Sun was a star like any other, we still didn't know what it was made of. Cecilia Payne changed that.
Even from a single pixel, multiwavelength data taken over time can reveal clouds, icecaps, oceans, continents, and even signs of life.
Someday, we'll look back and see a young galaxy forming stars for the first time. JADES-GS-z14-0, the farthest ever, isn't early enough.
Our scientific instruments are constantly improving, revealing nature's workings as never before. Without them, we'll remain in the dark.
These books helped build the empirical case that life's origins differ from those described in myths and legends.
Some nebulae emit their own light, some reflect the light from stars around them, and some only absorb light. But that's just the beginning.
When we see spiral galaxies, some are face-on, others are edge-on, but most are tipped at an angle. But which side is closest to us?
The tiniest galaxies of all are the most susceptible to violence by their larger, bullying siblings. That's why we need them in isolation.
Barnard's star, the closest singlet star system to ours, has long been a target for planet-hunters. We've finally confirmed it: they exist!
Since the dawn of history, humans have pondered our ultimate cosmic origins. Now in the 21st century, science has gone beyond the Big Bang.
Just 165,000 light-years away, the Large Magellanic Cloud is suspected to house a supermassive black hole. At last, evidence has arrived.
Fears of celestial collisions — and calculations of their likelihood — go back to the very origins of modern science itself.
One of the most promising dark matter candidates is light particles, like axions. With JWST, we can rule out many of those options already.
Astronomers see spiral and elliptical nebulae nearly everywhere, except by the Milky Way's plane. We didn't know why until the 20th century.
Perhaps the most well-known equation in all of physics is Einstein's E = mc². Does mass or energy increase, then, near the speed of light?
The full extent of the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest large galaxy to our own, has been entirely imaged with Hubble's exquisite cameras.