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Astronomy
The Universe is expanding, the expansion is accelerating, and some galaxies even recede faster-than-light. Can we see a change in real time?
Before Sun-like stars die, they transition from AGB red giants into preplanetary nebulae. Here's how Hubble sees the famous Egg Nebula.
No claim has even made it halfway up the Confidence of Life Detection (CoLD) scale, but 21st century science is just beginning to unfold.
Here in our modern Universe, it's cosmic dust that forms planets, complex molecules, and enables life. But how did the Universe create it?
13.8 billion years have passed since the Big Bang, but many stars will survive for longer than that. What's the longest-lived a star can be?
1hr 3mins
Astronomer Jill Tarter explains why SETI is really about technology, patience, and learning how to tell alien signals from our own.
Even at its faintest, Venus always outshines every other star and planet that's visible from Earth, and then some!
Many collaborations have used JWST to take deep-field images: some wider and some deeper than others. Here's how it can surpass them all.
7mins
30 years ago, we didn’t know other stars had planets orbiting them. Now, we may be on the verge of finding Earth’s Twin. Sara Seager explains.
The Universe formed stars, galaxies, and even galaxy clusters extremely early on in our cosmos. This new marvel is one more JWST surprise.
Just like animals, galaxies often have bizarre, unusual, or even unique properties. But finding many, all at once, really does raise alarms.
25mins
"In the process of mapping the heavens, it doesn't take long to realize the data problem they generated."
Our view of the world, the Universe, and ourselves can change with just one glimpse of what's out there. It's happened many times before.
Outer space begins just over 100 kilometers up, but what we can see extends for billions of light-years. Here's what all of it looks like.
Even in an expanding Universe, we expect both redshifted and blueshifted galaxies. But nearly every one we see is redshifted. Here's why.
The Sun often produces solar flares and coronal mass ejections, but a rare solar radiation storm made the 2026's first great auroral show.
With unprecedented resolution, wavelength sensitivity, and light-gathering power, JWST reveals our cosmos like no other observatory ever.
Gravitational lenses arise when foreground masses and background light sources properly align. Einstein rings are rare, but crosses abound.
The VENUS survey isn't about planets at all, but about finding multiply-lensed supernovae. The ambition? To save the expanding Universe.
US science is worth fighting for, but so are the science projects and scientists denied opportunities. Here are 4 paths all worth exploring.
Back in 1604, Johannes Kepler discovered the Milky Way's last naked-eye supernova. Here's how NASA's Chandra sees it over the 21st century.
The seeds of cosmic structure that were planted back during the Big Bang grew into the cosmic web we see today. What is it telling us?
Astronomer Lisa Kaltenegger spoke with Big Think about how "the colors of life" could leave detectable traces on distant planets.
Even the youngest galaxies are often dust-rich, even with very low levels of heavy elements. Nearby dwarf galaxy Sextans A explains why.
Astronomers have found starless gas clouds before, but Cloud 9 might be the most pristine one of all, with big lessons for cosmic history.
In a galaxy less than 300 million years after the Big Bang, oxygen's presence abounds. That's expected; its absence would truly be profound.
There will always be "wolf-criers" whose claims wither under scrutiny. But aliens are certainly out there, if science dares to find them.
If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it's a JWST image or any other observatory.
The highest-energy particles could be a sign of new, unexpected physics. But the simplest, most mundane explanation is particularly iron-ic.
While humanity has been skywatching since ancient times, much of our cosmic understanding has come about only recently. Very recently.