For the past two weeks, a massive dust storm has churned on Mars, forcing NASA to put its Opportunity rover into hibernation mode. But Curiosity, a rover on the other side of the planet, is now feeling the effects of the storm as well, revealing the dramatic, planet-size scale of this dusty weather system.
There’s a new docudrama coming out tomorrow about the life of Ulugh Beg, an obscure medieval astronomer who made Samarkand, now Uzbekistan, a thriving center of culture and science in the 15th century.
It would be silly to think we completely understand our universe, given how small the Earth is compared to the vastness of the cosmos. But from here on our tiny planet, it appears that much of the universe is missing. And I’m not just talking about dark matter. Regular stuff seems to be missing, too.
We’ve seen supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies tearing stars to shreds. We’ve detected the energy wave from relatively tiny black holes slamming together to create a wobble in space-time a billion light-years away. But what about the medium-sized black holes in between these extremes?
Your smartphone has a particle detector on it, and scientists want you to help them uncover how the universe really works and maybe even discover the true nature of dark matter. There are just a few bugs to work out.
There are lots of incredible things you can do with data. Like make this incredible animation of the Martian surface, for example.
There are eight planets in our Solar System (sorry Pluto), but collectively, these planets host over 175 moons, one or two of which may even harbor life. Indeed, our galaxy, based on what we observe here, could be bursting with exomoons, a significant number of which may be capable of fostering life, according to new…
Since the 1990s, scientists have detected thousands of exoplanets orbiting distant stars, but the discovery of baby protoplanets embedded within stellar expanses of gas and dust has proven to be a challenge. An international team of astronomers has used a new technique to finally discover not one, but three infant…
For years, astronomers have struggled to understand the source of anomalous microwave emissions coming from various locations across the Milky Way galaxy. A recently concluded survey of the planet-forming disks around young stars suggests these strange transmissions are being produced by something rather…
The center of our galaxy is an extreme place that holds all sorts of mysteries. Among those enigmas are what appear to be gas clouds that somehow refuse to be pulled apart by the immense gravity of the galactic center.
Pluto’s most famous visitor, the New Horizons spacecraft, has woken up after 165 days of hibernation.
As unearthly as it may be, Jupiter shares a phenomenon with our own planet that you might find very familiar: lightning strikes. And lightning on Jupiter is somehow both more (and less) like the lightning on Earth than scientists previously thought.
The Juno spacecraft currently orbiting Jupiter was supposed end its mission by crashing into the gas giant next month. Not anymore!
A meteor lit up the sky over Botswana, Africa, early Saturday evening. Scientists discovered the six-foot-wide asteroid just hours before it reached Earth.
On August 17, 2017, astronomers witnessed an extraordinary celestial event: a collision between two ultra-dense neutron stars. Scientists had never seen anything quite like it, leading to much speculation as to what happened in the wake of the monumental encounter. New research now suggests the collision produced a…
Astronomers peering closely at images of Pluto have spotted what look like dunes on the surface of the former planet. They wouldn’t be sand dunes, but dunes of methane ice—an Earthly feature on a totally alien world.
It’s already been quite a year for space porn, so sometimes I feel excessive by posting yet another new picture and saying “Look at this! It looks really cool!” But you know what, we’re hard-working people who deserve a break to marvel at the universe. So take in this incredible new image of the Tarantula Nebula, a…
Using a new technique, astronomers have documented one of the heaviest neutron stars known to science. It’s an important discovery for astronomers, but the newly recorded object is also providing an unprecedented opportunity to conduct particle physics research from a distance.
You might remember that about a year ago, astrophysicists turned the whole Earth into a telescope to try and get a picture of a black hole. That image isn’t available yet, but the folks behind this “Event Horizon Telescope” just released data from previous observing periods, and it’s making us even antsier for the…
