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Astronomy
There was a time where no starlight was visible throughout the entire cosmos. That time was short-lived: shorter than astronomers imagined.
CERN's NA64 experiment used a high-energy muon beam technique to advance the elusive search for dark matter, offering new hope for solving one of astronomy's greatest mysteries.
The sharpest optical images, for now, come from the Hubble Space Telescope. A ground-based technique can make images over 100 times sharper.
From the coldest planets to spacecraft that have exited the Solar System, these little-known facts stump even many professional astronomers.
Although the Big Bang occurred at an instant in time long ago, we still see the light from it. Will the evidence ever disappear completely?
Known as hypervelocity stars, we originally thought just one would be ejected every 100,000 years. The real number is much greater.
Northern lights in the American South, clusters of huge geomagnetic storms—the Sun is throwing a tantrum right on schedule.
Newborn stars are surrounded only by a featureless disk. Debris disks persist for hundreds of millions of years. So when do planets form?
Out beyond Neptune are some fascinating bodies left over from our Solar System's formation. Could one of them truly be spectacular?
On June 20, 2024, the summer solstice occurs at its earliest moment since 1796: when George Washington was President of the USA. Here's why.
There are two different ways to measure the expansion rate of the Universe, and they don't agree. And no, new measurements don't help.
A new all-time record! JWST's discovery of JADES-GS-z14-0 pushes the earliest galaxy ever seen to just 290 million years after the Big Bang.
The Universe is precisely dated at 13.8 billion years old, but astronomers claim the Methuselah star is 14.5 billion years old. What gives?
Ancient currents seemed to move in concert with a 2.4 million-year dance between the Red Planet and Earth.
Some think the reason fundamental scientific revolutions are so rare is because of groupthink. It's not; it's hard to mess with success.
Scientists are searching for dark matter particles that are trillions or even quadrillion times lighter than the more traditional searches.
In ~7 billion years, our Sun will run out of fuel and die. So will every star, eventually. Here are the different fates they'll encounter.
In 2023, data from the James Webb Space Telescope soured hopes that TRAPPIST-1 c had an atmosphere. That disappointment might have been premature.
The number of planets that could support life may be far greater than previously thought, a recent discovery suggests.
We normally think of dark matter as the "glue" that holds galaxies and larger structures together. But it's so much more than that.
There are many theories of gravity out there, and many interpretations of wide binary star data. What have we really learned from it all?
IceCube scientists have detected high-energy tau neutrinos from deep space, suggesting that neutrino transformations occur not only in lab experiments but also over cosmic distances.
In 2017, we detected gold being forged in a neutron star-neutron star merger. Now, in 2024, the amounts created simply don't add up.
The most iconic "dark nebula" of all lights up under JWST's infrared gaze. Here's what's newly discovered inside.
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Humanity has two giant collisions to thank for its existence, explains biologist Sean B. Carroll.
An interview with Lisa Kaltenegger, the founding director of the Carl Sagan Institute, about the modern quest to answer an age-old question: "Are we alone in the cosmos?"
This first-of-its-kind image offers a detailed look at the magnetic fields within the Central Molecular Zone.
Dark energy is one of the biggest mysteries in all the Universe. Is there any way to avoid "having to live with it?"
"I hope we take a mindset where we are willing to look for weird life in weird places."
The JWST's observations of well-developed galaxies early in universal history may coincide with accepted astronomical theory after all.