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Space
We know it couldn't have began from a singularity. So how small could it have been at the absolute minimum?
How can you "touch the Sun" if you've always been inside the solar corona, yet will never reach the Sun's photosphere?
A newly discovered “ultrahot Jupiter” has the shortest orbit of any known gas giant.
Every December, the Geminid meteor shower reaches its peak. Its 2021 show will be spectacular, but only if you do it right.
Even without the greatest individual scientist of all, every one of his great scientific advances would still have occurred. Eventually.
SpinLaunch's launcher, which is larger than the Statue of Liberty and works like the Olympic hammer-throw event, just came online in the New Mexico desert.
We should all pause to appreciate the awe-inspiring beauty of the Universe.
The majority of the matter in our Universe isn't made of any of the particles in the Standard Model. Could the axion save the day?
There are a few possible solutions to the problem of interstellar travel, but they largely remain within the realm of science fiction.
Communication with home will be difficult on long-haul space flights. The longer this isolation goes on, the more detached a crew becomes.
We once thought the Moon was completely airless, but it turns out it has an atmosphere, after all. Even wilder: It has a tail of its own.
Although most of the Universe's mass is dark matter, which gravitates just as well as normal matter, it still can't make black holes.
Based on the atoms that they're made out of, the innermost planet should always be the densest. Here's why Earth beats Mercury, hands down.
Despite the recent headlines, it’s an extraordinarily unlikely proposition. Have you ever wondered, if it were possible to travel through space straight ahead as quickly as you could imagine, if […]
Hubble’s still going strong after 31+ years. James Webb will never make it that long. Every decision that’s made — in both astronomy and in life — comes with its own set of pros and […]
After a wait of 397 years in orbit, we’re finally getting a truly ‘Great’ Conjunction. Recently, December 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn finally met. Looking towards the southwest skies from […]
Known as the ‘North Star,’ Polaris won’t stay that way forever. Planet Earth spins a full 360°, about its axis, every 24 hours. The Earth in orbit around the Sun, with […]
Have any of the stars we can see burned themselves out completely? When we look out across the Universe, we’re also peering back in time. In the early 21st-century, we’ve […]
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will truly usher in a new era of astronomy. If you want to find the very first galaxy of all, you have to understand not […]
There are exposed planetary cores orbiting stars, and we may have already found them. When we take a look at the planets in our Solar System, there’s a pretty clear difference […]
5 years ago, LIGO detected our first gravitational waves here on Earth. Next decade, LISA will start seeing them from space. When it comes to gravitational waves, our terrestrial laser interferometers […]
We still don’t know how it came to be this way. Every once in a while, we find an object in the Universe that completely mystifies us. For generations, astronomers have […]
Nothing in the Universe can travel faster than the speed of light. So how does space itself do it? One of the fundamental rules we all learn in physics — set forth by […]
In 2011, a bizarre, green object was discovered. At long last, we finally understand why. One of astronomy’s biggest surprises came in 2007, when a mysterious green object was found. […]
Over the past 30 years, we’ve revolutionized what we know about the Universe. But we couldn’t have done it without these lessons. On April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope rocketed […]
It isn’t just a day that comes every four years; it’s everything we need to keep our calendar aligned with Earth’s orbit. Once every four years, at least under most circumstances, […]
The problem is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, and the decision is all up to SpaceX whether they’ll fix it. On Wednesday morning, January 29, 2020, […]
The Eagle Nebula, complete with the Pillars of Creation, tells a mini-version of the story of how all the Universe’s stars formed. The Eagle Nebula, found 7,000 light-years away, demonstrates how […]
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 […]
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 […]