And could Earth-based life provide the seeds for biology elsewhere? Today, on Earth, there’s an enormous variety and diversity of life on our planet. Every single surviving lifeform appears, in […]

Even 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, we can reconstruct the first 3 minutes. About 100 years ago, we began to truly understand the nature of the Universe for the […]

The densest objects that haven’t collapsed to black holes can tell us information about the Universe unlike anything else. Swarming through our own galaxy, we’ve detected quite a few bizarre objects: […]

Only 3% of physics graduates and 2% of astronomy graduates are Black. That’s got to change. In the late 1990s, about 5% of the approximately 4000 bachelor’s degrees in physics per […]

We need more and better data to know, but that’s exactly what’s coming. Over the past few decades, a number of important advances have helped revolutionize our picture of the Universe. […]

Only 17 years after its discovery have we learned we’re safe from asteroid Apophis. Ever since its 2004 discovery, asteroid 99942 Apophis has threatened planet Earth. Asteroid Apophis has been measured […]

Something isn’t adding up, but it isn’t a calibration error. It’s been nearly 100 years since we discovered that the Universe was expanding. Ever since, the scientists who study the […]

Both views are equally spectacular, but unequally informative. Every so often, a creative amateur project highlights our professional achievements. This mosaic shows the region between the constellations of Cygnus and […]

Here are the best answers science has to a myriad of commonly asked questions. Over the past 12 months, the status of humans on planet Earth has changed dramatically. The […]

The most massive nearby stars could be the seeds our supermassive black holes need. The problem with the Universe, as we see it today, is that we only get a snapshot […]

A tiny layer of microscopic dust is the only reason it appears red. When we look out at our planet Earth from space, we see a myriad of diverse colors. The […]

It’s how successful our current theories are. Some 500 years ago, there was one scientific phenomenon that was, without controversy, extremely well-understood: the motion of the celestial objects in the sky. […]

It could have had any curvature at all. So why is it flat? What is the shape of the Universe? If you had come along before the 1800s, it likely never […]

We still don’t know what dark matter is, but at least we now know what it’s not. When it comes to science, we often say that it only takes a single […]

The Crab Nebula goes back to 1054, opening a window into our cosmic past. On July 4, 1054, Chinese astronomers recorded a “guest star” in the Taurus constellation. A ‘guest star’ […]

Dark matter was thought to be cold and collisionless. But maybe that’s not the full story. If you look out at the Universe and measure all the matter out there, including […]

Using atoms to probe the Universe reveals the complete Standard Model. If you wanted to uncover the secrets of the Universe for yourself, all you’d have to do is interrogate […]

A black woman most have never heard of made GPS possible. Over the span of a single lifetime, the world has changed in ways that would have been virtually unimaginable […]

Are space and time real like atoms are, or is spacetime just a calculational tool? When most of us think about the Universe, we think about the material objects that […]

NASA’s SOFIA mission is upgraded and back in action, and the Cigar Galaxy makes a perfect target. In theory, cold, neutral gas is the key to stars and galaxies. A visualization […]