Astronomy
- Earth
Will Smith narrates ‘One Strange Rock,’ but astronauts are the real stars
Hosted by Will Smith, ‘One Strange Rock’ embraces Earth’s weirdness and explores the planet’s natural history.
- Astronomy
Astronomers can’t figure out why some black holes got so big so fast
Early supermassive black holes are challenging astronomers’ ideas about how the behemoths grew so quickly.
- Planetary Science
Dwarf planet Ceres may store underground brine that still gushes up today
Waterlogged minerals and changing ice add to evidence that Ceres is geologically active.
- Astronomy
New Horizons’ next target has been dubbed Ultima Thule
NASA has named New Horizons spacecraft’s next target Ultima Thule after the public suggested tens of thousands of monikers for the Kuiper Belt object.
- Planetary Science
Cosmic dust may create Mars’ wispy clouds
Magnesium left by passing comets seeds the clouds of Mars, a new study suggests.
- Astronomy
We probably won’t hear from aliens. But by the time we do, they’ll be dead.
Astronomers build on the Drake Equation to probe the chance that humans will find existing aliens. The answer: Not likely.
- Astronomy
50 years ago, pulsars burst onto the scene
Thousands of pulsars have been discovered since the announcement of their detection 50 years ago.
- Physics
Some meteorites contain superconducting bits
Scientists find materials that conduct electricity without resistance in two meteorites.
- Astronomy
Massive stellar flare may have fried Earth’s nearest exoplanet
A massive flare made Proxima Centauri 1,000 times brighter in 10 seconds, dimming hopes that its planet may be habitable.
- Astronomy
Loner gas clouds could be a new kind of stellar system
Weird loner clumps of gas that have wandered for 1 billion years may have been stripped from a trio of larger galaxies.
- Cosmology
Here’s when the universe’s first stars may have been born
The first stars lit the cosmos by 180 million years after the Big Bang, radio observations suggest.
- Astronomy
Watch an experimental space shield shred a speeding bullet
Engineers tested how well a prototype shield for spacecraft would stand up to space debris by shooting it with a solid aluminum pellet.
