What if alien life — or even intelligence — don’t look like what we’re searching for? When the original Star Trek premiered, it was revolutionary for depicting sentient, intelligent species other than humans, living […]

How did black holes get so supermassive so fast? Astrophysics may be about to find out, thanks to three big 2017 discoveries. There’s a big problem when we look at […]

The ‘big discovery’ is nothing of the kind. We need a new planet-finding mission to probe the next frontier. Last week, NASA dropped a bombshell that it’s Kepler mission — the greatest […]

If you haven’t finished your holiday shopping yet, consider these 10 gifts, good any time of year! One of the hardest things when it comes to holiday shopping is to find […]

We’ve come so far since 2015; what do we know about dark matter now that we didn’t know then? Back in 2015, the dark matter situation was pretty straightforward: the large-scale […]

If December’s best natural sky show seems to get better every year, it isn’t your imagination. It’s science, and it’s spectacular! Every year, the Earth travels some 940 million kilometers […]

There’s so much that we’ve discovered, looking as deeply as possible into the void. But what are we missing? Start with the laws of physics, a Universe full of a specific […]

Just because it isn’t Thanksgiving anymore doesn’t mean we don’t have an entire Universe to be thankful for. Every day, we have a choice whether we take our lives, our existence, […]

No matter what the science says, there’s no excuse for cruel behavior to a colleague. Look out into the distant Universe as far as you possibly can, and you’ll come […]

If the gravity isn’t where the matter is, things get into trouble very, very quickly. The above image, a composite of optical data, X-ray data, and a reconstructed mass map, is […]

The first stars formed almost half a billion years before we could see their light. Here’s why. At the moment of the Big Bang, the Universe was full of matter and […]

Very sure. Here’s how we know. You’ve no doubt heard that the Universe itself has been around for 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang, and that scientists are extremely confident […]

For the first time, we’ve seen neutron stars merge. At last, the gravitational and electromagnetic sky are one. “It’s becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory […]

From the most beautiful to the most impactful, some of these are so powerful it’s breathtaking. “Truth in science, however, is never final, and what is accepted as a fact […]

Why the 2017 Nobel Prize isn’t the end, but the start, of something really, really big. “Wormholes are a gravitational phenomena. Or imaginary gravitational phenomena, as the case may be.” –Jonathan […]

A well-deserved award for the discovery over a century in the making. “Well, I walked into Building 20 and looked in at the various little labs. There was a bunch of […]

Why not just put your detectors in place of a giant mirror? “Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.” –Yousuf […]

Three eyes are so much better than two. Here’s why. “Einstein’s gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest single achievement of theoretical physics, resulted in beautiful relations connecting gravitational […]

If you think we’ve seen all there is to see in the Universe, you’re about to have your imagination unlocked. “Hubble often takes images of distant gravitationally lensed galaxies to […]

The ELT, at 39 meters in diameter, will dwarf everything that’s ever come before. “There are so many people who are arguing or fighting over issues which don’t have much relevance. […]

Last week, Cassini plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere. Here are the top 6 things we learned from it while it was alive. “Being a scientist and staring immensity and eternity in the […]

Something’s got to be wrong. But is it what we think about the star, the Universe, or something else? “The older you get, the more you realize that the way […]

For the first time, the gravitational wave sky and the astronomical sky might be coming together. It’s a new era, at long last. “Presently thought to be the most powerful explosions […]

Did you experience totality? I did, for the first time. And it was, even as a well-prepared scientist, beyond anything I expected. “All that is nowAll that is goneAll that’s […]

A new podcast: a first-person account, by a scientist, of what it was like to live and experience totality for the first time. “I sometimes ask people, ‘Can you be aware […]

Want to be hotter? Add more mass. Want to go even hotter than that? Lose almost all of it. “A candidate is not going to suddenly change once they get into […]

More than 90% of the eclipses to ever happen on Earth have already occurred. Don’t miss the next one! “We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded […]

It’s a great show in total darkness. Here’s how to not ruin it for yourself. “Yes, I am well aware that nature — or what we call nature: that totality of objects […]

No other object this large has come so close to Earth in millions of years. In the 5th millennium, we might suffer the consequences. “Honestly, if you’re given the choice […]

Gravitational waves and spacetime ripples have so much more to do with the Universe than just merging black holes. “The years of searching in the dark for a truth that one […]