Man, space is huge
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 …
Space
Outer space has way better fireworks than we ever will
Well, it’s the Fourth of July, which means sunburns, cookouts, and lots of questionable fuses being lit from coast to coast. But whether you’ll be …
Happy Fourth of July from the International Space Station!
The International Space Station is, as its name implies, a common ground for astronauts from many different countries, but that doesn’t stop them from having …
Hundreds of thousands of asteroids in our Solar System were born from a few now-dead planets
It’s tempting to imagine that the asteroids that litter our Solar System have been there from the start, circling the Sun for ages while the …
A massive object devastated Uranus a long time ago and it never fully recovered
Our Solar System is a pretty calm place these days, all things considered, but that wasn’t always the case. In the period when the planets …
Watch live as NASA scientists hunt for meteorites in the Pacific Ocean
NASA loves looking for cool stuff in space, but every once in a while something from space ends up here on Earth. That was the …
Feast your eyes on the very first image ever captured of a planet being born
Planet formation isn’t exactly the kind of thing that happens in the blink of an eye. New worlds form over extremely long stretches of time, …
New study says outer space is full of gross, toxic goop barfed out of stars
When you peer through a telescope into the night sky you’ll see plenty of neat things, including lots and lots of very distant stars, but …
Scientists just changed their mind about that ‘Alien Probe’ asteroid again
The bizarre interstellar visitor that whizzed through our Solar System late last year stunned scientists the world over. The object, named Oumuamua snuck up out …
NASA is about to give an update on the troubled development of the James Webb telescope, and you can listen to it live
NASA’s most powerful observational tool currently in development is the James Webb Space Telescope. It’s the heir apparent to the Hubble Space Telescope, and although …
Will we even recognize alien life when we see it? NASA isn’t so sure
Decades of science fiction movies, tv shows, and video games have led us to believe that when we spot another planet that has life we’re …
NASA has a new plan to find all the Earth-threatening asteroids it hasn’t detected yet
Thanks to the steady stream of new asteroid discoveries that rolls out of NASA and other skywatching groups around the world you might think that …
Scientists discover that wind on Venus actually makes it spin faster
Ever walk down the street on a particularly windy day and feel yourself being pushed along? The planet Venus knows all about that. Researchers studying …
Former astronaut doubts that NASA or SpaceX will make it to Mars with their shiny new rockets
It’s widely known that the next frontier for manned space flight is Mars. It’s our closest planetary neighbor that actually makes sense to visit, and …
The voice of Stephen Hawking will be shot at a black hole, and maybe someone will hear it
Stephen Hawking dedicated the majority of his life to the pursuit of knowledge, focusing on physics and math in a quest to explain how the …
Astronomers discover that the Sun has to deal with shrinkage
The Sun is big. By volume, the Sun could fit roughly 1.3 million Earths inside of it, but new research suggests that our friendly star …
When we finally find aliens, we might find their garbage first
Searching for extraterrestrial civilizations isn’t easy or we’d probably have already found a few. Traveling to other star systems in search of aliens would obviously …
NASA’s Opportunity rover, caught in fierce Martian dust storm, sends message back home
With so much interest in what NASA’s Curiosity rover has been up to recently — with the whole “maybe finding evidence of life” and whatnot …
Astronomers spot a trio of Earth-sized planets orbiting a distant star
Humanity is going to have to leave Earth eventually. We’ve already messed up our planet pretty badly, and even if we don’t push the Earth …
Scientists just discovered something very special about Jupiter’s lightning
Jupiter is a massive, swirling mass of towering storm clouds, and anyone who lives on Earth knows that storms are fantastic at producing lightning. When …
NASA reveals that it’s found organic molecules on Mars that may have come from life
Earlier this week NASA announced that it had something it wanted to tell us about Mars. Today, NASA scientists presented their findings in a pair …
NASA releases gorgeous images from its brand new GOES-17 satellite
NASA’s shiny new GOES-17 satellite got off to something of a rocky start last week as officials revealed that the spacecraft’s cooling system is, well, …
Sex on Mars is going to be risky, but it could create a new human subspecies
The idea of a colony of humans on Mars isn’t just science fiction anymore; NASA and space agencies around the world, along with independent scientists …
NASA astronaut reveals how complicated it is to poop in space
Spending a few months aboard the International Space Station is a privilege that only a tiny fraction of people will ever experience. We can only …
Is Pluto really just a giant comet?
Pluto has had a pretty interesting past few decades. Long considered the ninth official planet, astronomers who redefined what “planet” really means decided to reclassify …
This bizarre exo-asteroid is our Solar System’s first confirmed interstellar immigrant
Immigration is a hotly-debated topic around the world, but it turns out that our Solar System is far more welcoming than some of the countries …
NASA’s planet-hunting TESS satellite just took a photo that will make you feel so, so tiny
NASA’s newly-launched TESS — that stands for Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite in case you were wondering — is an incredibly powerful piece of hardware. It …
Yes, there might actually be a ‘Planet Nine,’ and the evidence is mounting
Lots of us grew up learning that there were nine planets in the Solar System. In the early 2000s we were told a different story, …
Scientists release new evidence of liquid water under Europa’s icy crust
If we’re going to find extraterrestrial life inside of our own Solar System there’s only a handful of places where scientists believe we might find …
SpaceX just successfully landed its most powerful rocket yet
By now, SpaceX landing one of its Falcon 9 rockets (or even landing two, for that matter) is barely worthy of a headline. But late …
