Space & Cosmos
Orionids Meteor Shower 2020: Watch It Peak in Night Skies
All year long as Earth revolves around the sun, it passes through streams of cosmic debris. The resulting meteor...
Stuart Bowyer, Astronomer Who Lent His Ear to the Cosmos, Dies at 86
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others...
How a 2nd-Grade Class Sent a Science Experiment to Space
Back in 2015, students in Maggie Samudio’s second-grade class at Cumberland Elementary School in West Lafayette, Ind., were contemplating...
Nobel Prize in Physics Awarded to 3 Scientists for Work on Black Holes
The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three astrophysicists Tuesday for work that was literally out of the...
Britain Is Getting Ready for Its Space Race
Cornwall, in England’s far southwest, is known for antique fishing villages and snug, cliff-lined beaches. Soon it may be...
At the Edge of Time, a Litter of Galactic Puppies
The discovery of a black hole surrounded by protogalaxies provides astronomers with a rare glimpse of the web of...
On Venus, Cloudy With a Chance of Microbial Life
In recent years the discovery of extremophiles, bacteria that live in nuclear reactors, hot ocean vents and other unlikely...
A Solar Forecast With Good News for Civilization as We Know It
The sun is beginning to perk up again.An international panel of scientists announced on Tuesday that the sun had...
The Search for Life on Venus Could Start With This Private Company
Elon Musk wants to settle humans on Mars with his rocket company SpaceX. Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, wants a...
Missions to Venus: Highlights From History, and When We May Go Back
Carl Sagan once said that Venus is the planet in our solar system most like hell. So when are...
Too Much Mars? Let’s Discuss Other Worlds
I used to check its downloads occasionally, using a program called Midnight Planets, built by Michael Howard, an app...
Is There a Black Hole in Our Backyard?
What is an astrophysicist to do during a pandemic, except maybe daydream about having a private black hole?Although it...
These Black Holes Shouldn’t Exist, but There They Are
“This is the first and only firm/secure mass measurement of an intermediate mass black hole at the time of...
A Rip in the Fabric of Interstellar Dreams
The road to Arecibo Observatory in northwestern Puerto Rico winds upward through farms and rainforest. Chickens run across the...
How Do You Solve a Moon Mystery? Fire a Laser at It
The moon is drifting away. Every year, it gets about an inch and a half farther from us. Hundreds...
This Star Looked Like It Would Explode. Maybe It Just Sneezed
In an email, Edward Guinan of Villanova University, who has been tracking Betelgeuse, called the new Hubble data “fantastic,”...
Perseid Meteor Shower: Watch It Peak in Night Skies
All year long as Earth revolves around the sun, it passes through streams of cosmic debris. The resulting meteor...
Amazon Satellites Add to Astronomers’ Worries About the Night Sky
Welcome to the age of the satellite megaconstellation. Within the next few years, vast networks, containing hundreds or even...
A Star Went Supernova in 1987. Where Is It Now?
“But very red!” he wrote in an email. “I still remember that exclamation point” in the Large Magellanic Cloud.According...
NASA Astronauts in SpaceX Capsule Make First Water Landing Since 1975
What have the astronauts been doing aboard the space station?Originally, the mission was to last only up to two...
