Space
- Planetary Science
Rosetta spacecraft gets better view of comet’s fuzz
News images are giving astronomers a sense of the size of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko's coma and the shape of its core.
- Astronomy
When looking for aliens, try finding their pollution
Future telescopes may discover civilized aliens by detecting the industrial pollutants called fluorinated gases in exoplanet atmospheres.
- Earth
Early life probably fell victim to massive space rocks
Planet-sterilizing impacts probably snuffed out early life on Earth until around 4.3 billion years ago.
- Astronomy
Tilted binary stars test theories of planet formation
Tilted disks in binary star systems may help astronomers explain variety of exoplanet orbits.
- Astronomy
Listening in on cosmic messages
Yet to be deciphered, fast radio bursts represent the latest messages from space with the potential to tell us more about the cosmos.
- Astronomy
Searching for distant signals
Fast radio bursts are bright, brief and seem to come from very far away. Astronomers are pointing major telescopes skyward to solve the puzzle of these cryptic signals.
- Planetary Science
Comet ISON fell apart earlier than realized
Comet ISON disintegrated at least eight hours before it grazed the surface of the sun last fall, new observations show.
- Planetary Science
Rosetta spacecraft sees possible ‘double’ comet
The comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko may actually be two objects stitched together.
- Astronomy
Voyager may not have entered interstellar space, after all
Two scientists argue that Voyager 1 space probe is still in solar bubble, despite NASA’s announcements to the contrary.
- Physics
Diamonds under pressure impersonate exoplanet cores
Scientists use lasers at the National Ignition Facility to squeeze diamonds to the extreme pressures found inside massive exoplanets.
- Cosmology
Lab version of early universe fails to solve lithium problem
An experiment that imitated conditions from just after the Big Bang failed to explain why observed amounts of lithium don’t match those expected from theory.
- Astronomy
Supernova rapidly creates dust between stars
Astronomers watch a shell of dust form within weeks of a star’s explosion.
