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Astronomy
The newest find recovers the earliest merger in galactic history: just 2 billion years after the Big Bang. Here’s what we know today.
1859's Carrington event gave us a preview of how catastrophic the Sun could be for humanity. But it could get even worse than we imagined.
We assume there's no preferred frame of reference in the Universe, and that light behaves the same in all directions. What if we're wrong?
We've now found many "conjoined" objects in the asteroid and Kuiper belts, including the first contact trinary, Nysa. What does it all mean?
On Earth's surface, we accelerate at 1g: 9.8m/s². In orbit, the acceleration is only slightly less. So why, then, are astronauts weightless?
Today, the world's largest operating optical telescope is 10.4 meters in diameter. These 3 facilities will lead astronomy's next generation.
With the National Solar Observatory's incredible DKIST, we see the Sun in the highest resolution ever. Its latest images blew us all away.
Few wavelengths of light reach Earth's surface; the others require going to space. What can the ultraviolet ASPERA space telescope do?
Obviously, the gas giants all top this list. But the fall-off is rapid after that, and the final two spots in the top 10 are truly shocking.
Human beings only see the Universe now: 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang. What would the earliest life, anywhere, have seen instead?
When people choose the greatest scientist of all, Newton and Einstein always come up. Here's why they should pick Johannes Kepler instead.
200 years ago, we hardly knew anything about our Universe on cosmic scales. Today, there's so much that we know. Here's how we arrived.
Our Universe has a positive, non-zero value to the energy within empty space. Can we potentially save ourselves by considering vacuum decay?
Although the Geminids have rivaled the Perseids recently, in 2026, the Perseids should win at their peak. Here's why, plus how to see them.
We've never witnessed a system of binary stars both go supernova before. A once-hidden source of gamma rays just revealed the first one.
In a gas cloud 26,000 light-years away, a 4-carbon sugar, erythrulose, has just been found. Here's what it means for life in the Milky Way.
Mathematics is our language for quantitatively describing reality, but it can also take us to worlds that never were. Physics needs more.
Despite the brilliance of these cosmic beacons, only 1% of a core-collapse supernova's energy is observable. The other 99% is in neutrinos.
With nearly 400 black hole events from gravitational waves, we can begin to infer their origins. At least two different populations emerge.
The history of atoms in the Universe is our own history: without them, there would be no us. So how do we piece their cosmic story together?
The LIGO facilities in the U.S. are the most sensitive gravitational wave detectors in the world. Their future remains uncertain.
At "only" 25 meters in diameter, the Giant Magellan Telescope is the smallest of three current projects. That might make all the difference.
Over 800,000 fireworks explode in under an hour in the world's largest fireworks shows. How do natural auroral displays compare in energy?
65 million years ago, a massive asteroid struck Earth, causing a mass extinction. Without advance warning, could anyone have spotted it?
With ~400 billion stars in the Milky Way and 6-20 trillion galaxies overall, that makes for a lot of stars. But not as many as you'd think.
The first one, NGC 1052-DF2, was mired in controversy. With four examples now, there only remains one possible escape. What does nature say?
Over 10 billion years in the past, an ultra-massive galaxy cluster lenses objects behind it. That has big implications for dark matter.
At 240 million light-years away, galaxy NGC 1277 hasn't formed new stars in over 10 billion years. Could it contain the first stars' ashes?
We live on Earth, orbiting the Sun, part of our Solar System, within the Milky Way. But what's our membership status on even larger scales?
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS has an ancient age, but not for the reason most commonly touted. These three lines of evidence are far stronger.