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Space Exploration
The last infant stars are finishing their formation inside these pillars of gas. The evaporation of those columns is almost complete.
Sure, there's less daylight during winter than summer, as your hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun. But darkness goes deeper than that.
This research team is working out how to detect extraterrestrial cells in the liquid water ocean hidden beneath Enceladus’s icy crust.
From the coldest planets to spacecraft that have exited the Solar System, these little-known facts stump even many professional astronomers.
Newborn stars are surrounded only by a featureless disk. Debris disks persist for hundreds of millions of years. So when do planets form?
In December 1968, human beings made their first-ever journey to the Moon aboard Apollo 8. Their most important discovery? Planet Earth.
Out beyond Neptune are some fascinating bodies left over from our Solar System's formation. Could one of them truly be spectacular?
To know how to protect its astronauts, NASA needs to first understand the threat.
From forming bound states to normal scattering, many possibilities abound for matter-antimatter interactions. So why do they annihilate?
A new all-time record! JWST's discovery of JADES-GS-z14-0 pushes the earliest galaxy ever seen to just 290 million years after the Big Bang.
Ancient currents seemed to move in concert with a 2.4 million-year dance between the Red Planet and Earth.
The threats Mars astronauts face — and how NASA is working to solve them.
In ~7 billion years, our Sun will run out of fuel and die. So will every star, eventually. Here are the different fates they'll encounter.
In 2023, data from the James Webb Space Telescope soured hopes that TRAPPIST-1 c had an atmosphere. That disappointment might have been premature.
The mutual distance between well-separated galaxies increases with time as the Universe expands. What else expands, and what doesn't?
The number of planets that could support life may be far greater than previously thought, a recent discovery suggests.
The most iconic, longest-lived space telescope of all, NASA's Hubble, is experiencing orbital decay as the solar cycle peaks. Here's why.
NASA's minivan-sized drone is scheduled to search for signs of life on Titan in 2034.
IceCube scientists have detected high-energy tau neutrinos from deep space, suggesting that neutrino transformations occur not only in lab experiments but also over cosmic distances.
If the past is any guide, things are going to take off quickly.
An interview with Lisa Kaltenegger, the founding director of the Carl Sagan Institute, about the modern quest to answer an age-old question: "Are we alone in the cosmos?"
This first-of-its-kind image offers a detailed look at the magnetic fields within the Central Molecular Zone.
In the 20th century, many options abounded as to our cosmic origins. Today, only the Big Bang survives, thanks to this critical evidence.
"I hope we take a mindset where we are willing to look for weird life in weird places."
Life arose on Earth very early on. After a few billion years, here we are: intelligent and technologically advanced. Where's everyone else?
Total eclipses are a product of a strange and almost eerie cosmic coincidence — one that makes Earth an even rarer world in the galaxy and, by proxy, in the Universe.
Since 1962, humanity has been sending messages into space with the intent to make contact with intelligent extraterrestrials. Are those efforts worth the risks?
Aliens are often portrayed in popular culture as humanoid. But in reality, intelligent extraterrestrials might take far stranger forms.
Forensics has reached the final frontier, and could be used to solve future space accidents—or crimes.
The center of the galaxy doesn't just host stars and a black hole, but an enormous set of rich gassy and dusty features. Find out more!