The latest challenger to dark matter’s throne may not be so difficult to knock off, after all. This post was written by Sabine Hossenfelder. Sabine is a theoretical physicist specialized in […]

You may have heard of Laniakea, but don’t count on it being real. “It’s the gravity that shapes the large scale structure of the universe, even though it is the weakest […]

And England almost burned themselves down as a result. “When Benjamin Franklin inveted the lightning rod, the clergy, both in England and America, with enthusiastic support of George III, condemned it […]

But are any of these potentially Earth-like worlds actually inhabited? Here are the prospects. “It isn’t only the beauty of the night sky that thrills me. It’s the sense I […]

Phobos and Deimos may have had another, inner, much larger companion! “The larger inner moons fall back to Mars after about 5 million years due to the tidal pull of […]

If Scotty beams you up for a trip around the Sun, here’s how to handle it. “I really didn’t have to work, shall we say, with Star Trek. It was a […]

Hydrogen is #1, Helium is #2. Who’s number 3? Hint: it’s not #3 in the periodic table! “It is the function of science to discover the existence of a general reign […]

If the Big Bang happened and everything is moving away from us, where’s the center? “I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out […]

We haven’t found the truly “first” ones yet, but we’re not just on our way; we’re almost there. “For the first time we can learn about individual stars from near the […]

Sometimes science is stranger than fiction. “To morrow, I believe, is to be an eclipse of the sun, and I think it perfectly meet and proper that the sun in the […]

Is gravitational repulsion a real thing? “For the first time, astronomers have outlined and named the network of galaxies that includes the Milky Way, adding a line to our cosmic address […]

Why Saturn’s Iapetus has three great mysteries… and we’ve only solved one of them. “The dance between darkness and light will always remain — the stars and the moon will always need the […]

One of the most famous quantum physicists of all makes his mark in space, 80 years after first predicting it. “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed […]

Before you even look through your telescope, you need to know where to begin. “If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control […]

It may be the only way to save the USA — and the world — from alternative facts. “If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” –Ernest Rutherford There […]

The outer three can even be seen with a small, 1.5 meter telescope. This 2010 picture of three of the four known exoplanets orbiting HR 8799 represents the first time […]

It’s the most fundamental fabric of the Universe itself. But how does it work? “‘Space-time’ — that hideous hybrid whose very hyphen looks phoney.” –Vladimir Nabokov When it comes to understanding the Universe, there […]

How a telescope 100 times the size of Hubble is going to change everything. “For my confirmation, I didn’t get a watch and my first pair of long pants, like […]

Why do the asteroids that fall to Earth have the composition they do? A giant space collision 466 million years ago may be to blame. “Men of genius are often dull […]

Why weightlessness is possible, even if there’s no place you can hide from the Universe’s longest-range force. “It was a strange lightness, a drifting feeling. Zero gravity. I understood that […]