Imagine a mountain range many times larger than the entire Earth, floating in mid-air, held up by nothing you can see. It sounds like something from a fantasy novel but that is essentially what solar prominences are and for decades, scientists have struggled to explain how they exist at all. A team
Imagine a mountain range many times larger than the entire Earth, floating in mid-air, held up by nothing you can see. It sounds like someth
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If you have ever pushed your finger against the hole of a bicycle pump and felt the air grow warm as you compressed it, you already understa
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Where exactly is the edge of the Milky Way? That question is harder to answer than one might expect. Since we’re inside of the galaxy itself
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The Sombrero Galaxy is so picture perfect it looks like a painting. It sits in space as if its hung on a gallery wall. It's an iconic deep s
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NASA and other space agencies spend a lot of time and money considering the cleanliness of their missions. Billions of dollars are spent in
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Alpha Centauri is the nearest star system to our own, sitting just over four light years away and it’s fascinated astronomers and storytelle
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A few years ago, I attempted to make an origami (paper folded) animal. Armed with a square of paper and what I can only describe as misplace
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Space travel has taught us valuable lessons for living and working in outer space, specifically regarding how microgravity (often mistakenly
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We don't know for sure how many dwarf galaxies are attached to the Milky Way because they're dim and hard to see. There's at least 50 of the
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Scientists know that the behaviour of stars can dictate planetary habitability. Research shows that young stars emit powerful radiation that
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A team of scientists at the University of Virginia is using data from an instrument in Arizona to study cosmic structure and the result is t
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The planet Uranus is a weird place. Not only does it roll around the Sun on its side once every 84.3 Earth years, it also sports a spindly s
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Imagine holding a wine glass up to a candle (of course I had to pour a glass to try this.) The curved glass bends and distorts the flame, st
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I watched Armageddon again fairly recently with Bruce Willis, oil drillers in space and an asteroid the size of Texas bearing down on Earth.
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Finding planets used to be a painstaking business. Astronomers would fix their gaze on a handful of carefully chosen stars, watch and wait,
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The farthest spacecraft from Earth, theVoyager 1probe, has just shut down another instrument. The reason for this shutdown is that Voyager's
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Antarctica, which harbors one of the harshest environments on Earth, would hardly seem to be a Valhalla for conventional astronomical observ
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The giant planets in our solar system—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—have challenged our understanding of planetary formation and evol
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It turns out that even after studying our solar system in depth and discovering more than 6,100 exoplanets across more than 4,500 exoplaneta
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The Moon has played a huge role in the development of Earth. It stabilizes the planet, tempered dramatic climate swings, and possibly even p
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We can't really understand the Universe without knowing its history. Since galaxies are among the Universe's defining features, understandin
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*If skies are clear, observers across the Americas have a chance to spot a fine lunar occultation of the bright star Regulus Saturday night.
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OnJuly 1st, 2025, 3I/ATLAS became the third known interstellar object (ISO) to pass through our Solar System. By October 30th, it made its c
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3I/ATLAS created quite the buzz as it flew through our Solar System. As just the third interstellar object (ISO) ever detected, what our ins
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Part of a Mars rover's job is to detect anomalies. When something stands out from its surroundings, it indicates that something noteworthy h
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In the exotic world of particle physics, neutrinos may be the most mysterious members. They rarely interact with other matter, have almost n
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One of the most dramatic and memorable scenes from Interstellar comes from Miller’s planet - and if you don’t want a spoiler for an 11 year
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Imagine a world where the Sun never rises and never sets! It feels like that here in the UK sometimes with what feels like a never-ending co
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There is a place at the centre of our Galaxy where the rules of physics are pushed to their limits. Squeezed into a region smaller than our
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When the first gravitational wave (GW) was detected back in 2015, scientists said they had opened a new window into the Universe. While most
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NASA's MSL Curiosity rover has found some more pieces of the puzzle that is Mars' ancient habitability. Evidence that the planet was once wa
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The dependable Hubble Space Telescope has been in orbit for more than 35 years now. It's at a point where it can reexamine objects it observ
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Scientists have been debating for decades whether Mars once held a vast ocean covering a large part of its northern face. To prove the idea,
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The search for life beyond Earth has traditionally focused on exoplanets orbiting Sun-like stars, which is a G-type star. However, low-mass
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As we make our way through the latest solar maximum period, scholars and scientists are looking to similar events in the past to learn more
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Human history is littered with expired civilizations, and scholars and archaeologists have made a determined effort to understand why and ho
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So far, America has remained ahead in the new space race. But its biggest rival is making continual steps to catch up. China announced anoth
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The Universe looks mighty impressive when visualized with X-ray instruments. More importantly, X-ray images provide vital scientific insight
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Liquid water is the primary ingredient for life as far as we can determine. The search for habitable exoplanets focuses on this fact. Exopla
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New missions mean new capabilities - and one particularly interesting new mission is finally up and running. Data is starting to come in fro
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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory was built with an ambitious purpose in mind. As part of its 10-yearLegacy Survey of Space and Time(LSST), the
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(This is the final part of a series on Cherenkov radiation — the "light boom." ReadPart 1,Part 2, andPart 3first.) So we know what Cherenko
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Between theArtemis Program, the ESA'sMoon Village, and the Sino-RussianInternational Lunar Research Station(ILRS), the next step in space ex
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(This is Part 3 of a series on Cherenkov radiation — the "light boom." ReadPart 1andPart 2first.) We have our material — the crowd at the r
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In 2014, a strange cloudy object called G2 made a close approach to Sagittarius A*, (Sag A*) the supermassive black hole at the heart of the
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Understanding the beginning of the solar system requires us to look at some very strange places. One such place is at the so-called “Trojan”
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Two factors dominate our search for life and habitability elsewhere in the galaxy. The first is liquid water, which, as far as we know, is n
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Comet R3 Pan-STARRS is about to put on its climatic perihelion act. We’re one comet down, and one to go for spring season 2026. Werecently
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Living long-term on the Moon means surviving the devastating toll that deep space takes on a human body. Astronauts in low gravity environme
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Mars is well known as a static, frozen desert. We tend to think of the only thing changing on the surface of the Red Planet is due to the oc
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(This is Part 2 of a series on Cherenkov radiation — the "light boom." ReadPart 1first.) Before we get to Brad Bradington sprinting down th
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Based on the most widely accepted models of how the Universe began - Big Bang cosmology and the LCDM model - scientists theorize that massiv
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Engineers love a good practical challenge, especially when it comes to spaceflight. But there’s one particular challenge facing the crewed m
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To say NASA has been undergoing some massive administrative changes lately is a huge understatement. One of the more concerning ones, accord
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I want you to imagine a scene. It's the red carpet. It's the night of the Oscars, or the Emmys, or the participation trophy ceremony for you
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Some of the most scientifically important astronomical objects are the ones that push the boundaries of definitions. These objects can exist
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A pair of dwarf galaxies in the giant Virgo Cluster show what can happen when these stellar cities interact. Scientists at the University of
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OnFriday, April 10, 2026at 5:07 p.m. PDT (02:07 p.m. EDT), the first astronauts to travel to the Moon in more than fifty years made it back
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Mars rovers have spearheaded the exploration of the planet over the last 20 years. MSL Curiosity and Perseverance are awe-inspiring machines
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Keep an eye out this coming week for the venerable Lyrid meteor shower. April flowers mean one thing to springtime sky-watchers: it’s time
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Venus is often called Earth's twin, but spend any time with it and the comparison falls apart quickly. Its surface is hot enough to melt lea
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Stars are not the serene, unchanging beacons they appear to be. Over billions of years they swell, convulse, shed their outer layers and col
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The Sun's outer atmosphere is trying to kill us, not literally of course but the corona, that wispy halo of superheated gas extending millio
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When I built my first telescope, a 15cm reflector, it was in my back garden! Location was the least of my problems but imagine trying to do
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(This is Part 4 of a series on neutrinos, Majorana fermions, and one of the strangest open questions in physics. ReadPart 1,Part 2, andPart
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NASA and other space agencies are intent on sending astronauts back to the Moon, and this time, to stay! A vital part of these plans for red
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They pass through you at a rate of around a hundred trillion every second, that’s about 12 quadrillion while you read this article, dependin
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The lunar south pole looks chaotic from orbit. Craters heaped upon craters, ancient basins, scarps and slopes tumbling in every direction, i
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SN 2025mkn is a Type II supernova and it wasn't supposed to be visible at all. The violent death of a massive star that had exhausted its nu
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Earth and the course of life on Earth have been shaped by impacts. Scientists have uncovered links between massive impacts and changes in cl
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(This is Part 3 of a series on neutrinos, Majorana fermions, and one of the strangest open questions in physics. ReadPart 1andPart 2.) Neut
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An ultra-hot Jupiter exoplanet orbiting a young A-type star gave scientists using the Gemini South telescope a look at how both a star and i
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Even a modest telescope reveals the breathtaking Saturnian ring system that has captivated astronomers for four centuries, a world so alien
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We have been searching for signals from other civilisations for over sixty years. Radio telescopes on Earth have swept the sky, listened pat
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Space is full of objects that push the boundaries of imagination, but few do it quite as effectively as a black hole. At its simplest, a bla
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When India'sChandrayaan-1orbiter released theMoon Impact Probe(MIP) into the Shackleton crater on the Moon, they confirmed something scienti
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(This is Part 2 of a series on neutrinos, Majorana fermions, and one of the strangest open questions in physics. ReadPart 1first.) What I'm
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Every electronic device you have ever owned shares a critical weakness. Push it past roughly 200 degrees Celsius and it begins to fail. Your
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How does something come from nothing? It is perhaps the most profound question in all of science and one we still cannot fully answer. How
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Look up at a full Moon on a clear night and you are staring at a face that has been punched, gouged, and battered for four billion years. Th
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