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Astrophysics
The least exciting of all eclipses, a penumbral lunar eclipse, foreshadows the spectacular show that April 8th's total eclipse will bring.
You can only create or destroy matter by creating or destroying equal amounts of antimatter. So how did we become a matter-rich Universe?
No matter how you define the end, including the demise of humanity, all life, or even the planet itself, our ultimate destruction awaits.
Because of dark energy, distant objects speed away from us faster and faster as time goes on. How long before every galaxy is out of reach?
Given enough time, all galaxies will expel their star-forming material and wind up dead. Is this the earliest one, or is it just asleep?
Galaxies don't simply feed their central supermassive black holes, but the activity generated inside affects the entire galaxy and more.
Symmetries aren't just about folding or rotating a piece of paper, but have a profound array of applications when it comes to physics.
Ground-based facilities enable the greatest scientific production in all of astronomy. The NSF needs to be ambitious, and it's now or never.
The Multiverse fuels some of the 21st century's best fiction stories. But its supporting pillars are on extremely stable scientific footing.
To Fred Hoyle, the Big Bang was nothing more than a creationist myth. 75 years later, it's cemented as the beginning of our Universe.
JWST has puzzled astronomers by revealing large, bright, massive early galaxies. But the littlest ones pack the greatest cosmic punch.
Tech designed to fuse atoms might be able to clean up space, too.
When cosmic inflation came to an end, the hot Big Bang ensued as a result. If our cosmic vacuum state decays, could it all happen again?
In 1957, humanity launched our first satellite; today's number is nearly 10,000, with 500,000+ more planned. Space is no longer pristine.
Leap day only comes once every four years, including in 2024. But the reason we have it, including when we do and don't, may surprise you.
The detection of two celestial interlopers careening through our solar system has scientists eagerly anticipating more.
For now, our Solar System's eight planets are all safe, and relatively stable. Billions of years from now, everything will be different.
Meanwhile meteorite hunters rushed to Berlin to find this most rare space rock.
Until the Apollo missions, we had no idea how the moon got here, just a series of educated guesses. They rewrote the story of the moon’s origins.
There are plenty of life-friendly stellar systems in the Universe today. But at some point in the far future, life's final extinction will occur.
The second law of thermodynamics tells us that entropy always increases. But that doesn't mean it was zero at the start of the Big Bang.
So far, gravitational waves have revealed stellar mass black holes and neutron stars, plus a cosmic background. So much more is coming.
Almost every large structure in the Universe displays a 5:1 dark matter-to-normal matter ratio. Here's how some galaxies defy that rule.
In the early stages of our Solar System, there were three life-friendly planets: Venus, Earth, and Mars. Only Earth thrived. Here's why.
For thousands of years, humanity had no idea how far away the stars were. In the 1600s, Newton, Huygens, and Hooke all claimed to get there.
Although many of Einstein's papers revolutionized physics, there's one Einsteinian advance, generally, that towers over all the rest.
Beyond the planets, stars, and Milky Way lie ultra-distant objects: galaxies and quasars. Here's how far back we've seen throughout history.
Although early Earth was a molten hellscape, once it cooled, life arose almost immediately. That original chain of life remains unbroken.
In 1924, Edwin Hubble found proof that the Milky Way isn't the only galaxy in the Universe.
The Universe didn't begin with a bang, but with an inflationary "whoosh" that came before. Here are the biggest questions that still remain.