Astronomy

Astronomy

Top 10 messages to send to E.T.

Fears that sending signals to alien civilizations would provoke an invasion shouldn't prevent transmitting important messages.

Astronomy

Stellar nursery gives birth to quadruplets

Four young stars, still in their cocoons, show that binary and other multiple star systems form together.

Astronomy

Finding joy and inspiration in the pursuit of knowledge

Editor in Chief Eva Emerson ruminates on the power of knowledge, and the ways scientists are refining how we think about the aging human brain, far away comets and even the speed of light.

Astronomy

White dwarf pair will trigger a supernova — in 700 million years

Astronomers found two white dwarfs with enough mass to explode as a supernova.

Astronomy

First stars born later than thought

New results from the Planck mission indicate that the first stars began to shine 550 million years after the Big Bang.

Astronomy

Asteroids or planets might trigger a supernova

Rocky debris falling onto a white dwarf might trigger some supernovas.

Physics

When entering a black hole, fasten your seat belt

Rapidly spinning black holes can generate turbulence, a new analysis shows.

Astronomy

Giant rings encircle young exoplanet

Stretching 90 million kilometers from their center, 37 stripes of dust around exoplanet were probably crafted by moons.

Cosmology

Dust erases evidence for gravity wave detection

The claimed detection of primordial gravitational waves does not hold up after taking into account galactic dust, a new analysis concludes.

Astronomy

Neptune-like worlds could become habitable

Mini-Neptunes can drift toward their stars and lose their atmospheres, leaving behind ice-rich rocky cores that can become watery worlds.

Astronomy

Oldest solar system unearthed by Kepler

Five rocky planets orbit the 11.2-billion-year-old star Kepler 444, suggesting that Earth-sized worlds formed in the early universe.

Planetary Science

Large asteroid buzzes Earth

Asteroid 2004 BL86 swings by Earth today at three times the distance to the moon, the closest asteroid encounter until 2027.