Many of the objects NASA and other scientific bodies choose to study in space are incredibly old, but that’s not the case with Kes 75. Located a mere 19,000 light years from Earth, Kes 75 is a ultra-dense chunk of a star that went supernova, and now scientists are calling it the youngest known pulsar …
Science fiction disaster movies like to imagine what life on Earth might be like in the midst of a space-borne catastrophe like an asteroid strike, but reality can be even more frightening. Imagine — instead of a collision between a smallish planet like Earth and a large space rock — two entire galaxies running into …
Size is relative. A carpenter ant is huge compared to a regular ant, but it’s still tiny when compared to, say, your foot. The challenge of adequately describing size is even worse when you start talking about space, which we all know is big, but also happens to be hard to compare to anything else. …
We sometimes think of the Sun as a pretty special star, but only because of the fact that Earth happens to be in the perfect place to be warmed by it without being incinerated in the process. In the grand scheme of things, the Sun is just another star, which means it was born in …
Generally speaking, black holes are bad news for life. We obviously don’t know for certain, but it is widely assumed that being sucked into the incredible gravity of a black hole is an instant death sentence for any star, planet, or life form that is unfortunate enough to share that fate. That’s why it might …
It wasn’t all that long ago that the thought of detecting planets outside of our own Solar System was nothing but a dream for astronomers. Thanks to the relentless march of technology, we now have several thousands of exoplanets on the books, with more being discovered on a regular basis. But while we’ve done a …
It’s always a bummer to find out you’re not as special as you thought you were — like when you scored great on an exam in school only to realize the entire class aced it, too — and now the entirety of our planet, our Solar System, and even the Milky Way itself has to …
Ever wonder what you’re made of? Is Earth, and by extension humanity, built of matter that collected here after the big bang, or are our origins much more complicated? Our little Solar System tucked away between the massive arms of the Milky Way galaxy might not have the origins that scientists have long assumed, and …
We’re pretty familiar with our own Solar System, but the galaxy that we reside in is absolutely enormous. The Milky Way is thought to have somewhere between 100 billion and 400 billion stars, depending on which estimate you favor, and some of the most interesting ones are moving so fast that they stand out in …
