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Astronomy
Some astrobiologists believe life is rare, while others believe it is common in the Universe. How can we find out which view is correct?
"The pulsar sort of consumes the thing that recycled it, just as the spider eats its mate.”
The answer may lie in the particular way sand forms on Titan.
In all of human history, only 5 spacecraft have had the right trajectory to exit the Solar System. Will they ever catch Voyager 1?
Data from the Zhurong rover suggests the Red Planet was wet more recently than we thought.
At four million solar masses, the Milky Way's supermassive black hole is quite small for a galaxy its size. Did we lose the original?
The idea of black holes has been around for over 200 years. Today, we're seeing them in previously unimaginable ways.
Astronomers in 2017 caught an image of a supermassive black hole in a galaxy far, far away. Doing it in our own galaxy is a huge milestone.
After years of analysis, the Event Horizon Telescope team has finally revealed what the Milky Way's central black hole looks like.
We have long thought that Pluto was completely frozen solid, but the discovery of cryovolcanoes challenges that assumption.
Speculation about the existence of aliens goes all the way back at least to the Greek philosophers. Their arguments will sound familiar.
Everything that gets heated up has to, somehow, radiate that energy away. Here's what we see when that happens in the Universe.
For a thousand light-years in all directions, there's a "bubble" that the Sun sits at the center of. Here's the story behind it.
Europa may be difficult to access. But if a recent study is correct, its subsurface ocean would be more accessible than previously thought.
Most potentially hazardous asteroids remain unidentified. NEO surveyor could change that, but only if it's funded, and soon.
All life forms, anywhere in our Universe, are chemically connected yet completely unique.
Was there ever life on Mars? Is there life on Mars now? Did it originate there or here, on Earth? All possibilities are fascinating.
It was supposed to have a 5.5-10 year lifetime, and take 6 months to calibrate. It's performing better than anyone anticipated.
If there are human-sized creatures walking around on other planets, would we be able to view them directly?
There are pros and cons to sending interstellar messages to aliens that may or may not exist.
Pluto failed to meet the definition of a planet, but some astronomers think there might be a legitimate Planet 9 out there.
The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter recently captured images that could help scientists better under the mysterious physics of our Sun.
Dr. Tyson explains where we might find aliens, why "dark matter" is a misleading term, and why you can blame physics for your favorite team's loss.
Single objects rarely change the course of an entire scientific field. Distant object GNz7q, a galaxy-quasar hybrid, might do exactly that.
We've fooled ourselves before with galaxies that look just like this one. The evidence we have simply isn't strong enough.
In the latest edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast, we talk with soon-to-be Dr. Arianna Long about galaxies, from birth to today.
An optical telescope with a massive 20-foot (6-meter) mirror has an eye-popping price tag of $11 billion.
Our Universe requires dark matter in order to make sense of things, astrophysically. Could massive photons do the trick?
Many people perceive the struggle to understand our Universe as a battle between science and God. But this is a false dichotomy.
The Hubble Space Telescope, 32 years after its launch, broke the all-time record for most distant star. It won't do better.