Space
- Science & Society
Replacing paradigms requires open minds
Cosmological crises require creativity, but science enforces conformity.
- Astronomy
Billions and billions of Earth-sized planets call Milky Way home
Using Kepler data, astronomers estimate that a sizeable fraction of the galaxy’s sunlike stars have Earth-sized planets that could support liquid water.
- Astronomy
Giant loner could shift idea of star formation
Observations of WR 102ka suggest it could have been born without any gaseous companions.
- Planetary Science
Moon material on Earth
Scientists now think that tektites are a type of impactite, formed during the rapid heating and cooling of material ejected when a meteorite strikes Earth.
- Astronomy
Astronomers explain planets’ backward motion
Giant planets in distant orbits may be reversing the direction of their closer-in neighbors.
- Cosmology
Dark energy search gets murkier
Supernova measurements muddle scientists’ efforts to explain universe’s accelerating expansion.
- Cosmology
Candidates for dark matter particles bite the dust
Most sensitive experiment yet determines that earlier findings were just artifacts.
- Astronomy
An Earth-sized hell circles faraway star
Kepler-78b, an Earth-sized, extremely hot exoplanet made of rock and iron, is the smallest with known diameter and mass.
- Astronomy
Solar system with seven planets discovered
Kepler data has identified a star with a seven-planet system structured similarly to the sun’s clutch of planets.
-
- Astronomy
Oort cloud tosses astronomers a cometary curveball
In late November, ISON will deliver debris from the dawn of the solar system to Earth’s doorstep.
- Astronomy
Most distant galaxy discovered
Astronomers have observed a galaxy as it existed 700 million years after Big Bang.
