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Space Exploration
25 min
Are we blinded by our desire to find extraterrestrial life?
“Deep down the natural endpoint of this whole goal of looking for planets is to answer the question: are we alone?”
Why NASA should go all-in on nuclear propulsion
"Think of it like a transcontinental railroad — not the fastest way to move a lot of mass, but certainly the most efficient,” Jared Isaacman said about nuclear electric propulsion.
What do distant observers see when they look at Earth?
From here on Earth, looking farther away in space means looking farther back in time. So what are distant Earth-watchers seeing right now?
Thousands of NASA employees to bid farewell to the NASA they knew
As October begins, thousands of longtime NASA employees are leaving the agency. 4000+ will exit by January 9, 2026, changing NASA forever.
Finding organics on Mars means absolutely nothing for life
The red planet, Mars, may once have been teeming with life, just as Earth is today. Finding "organics" on Mars, however, doesn't mean life.
Ask Ethan: Where does cosmic dust come from?
Dust is ubiquitous in the modern Universe, appearing in nearly all galaxies. But our cosmos was born dust-free. So where does it originate?
Cosmism: The 19th-century movement to reach space and immortality
In revolutionary Russia, a group of forward-thinking philosophers offered an alternative to both futurism and communism.
12 min
Michio Kaku: Why we don’t even rank on the Kardashev scale
"We're stuck at type zero. But what would it take to move between universes? What would it take to enter a black hole? What would it take to break the light barrier?"
NASA to needlessly kill Juno mission to Jupiter this month
The Juno spacecraft, orbiting and imaging Jupiter since 2016, is still succeeding. Without a further extension, the mission now faces death.
See the whole Universe at once in this unique logarithmic view
As we look to larger cosmic scales, we get a broader view of the expansive cosmic forest, eventually revealing the grandest views of all.
NASA chief to defy agency’s charter, terminating science
NASA's 1958 charter's top priority was, "the expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space." Is this how it ends?
NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory: the future (or end) of NASA science
At the end of July, hundreds of scientists convened to plan NASA's upcoming astrophysics flagship mission. Will the US allow it to happen?
What we’ve learned after 35 years of NASA’s Hubble
When the Hubble Space Telescope first launched in 1990, there was so much we didn't know. Here's how far we've come.