Space & Astrophysics
We’ll never be able to extract any information about what’s inside a black hole’s event horizon. Here’s why a singularity is inevitable.
The great hope is that beyond the indirect, astrophysical evidence we have today, we’ll someday detect it directly. But what if we can’t?
By studying the dwarf galaxy Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte ~3 million light-years away, JWST reveals the Universe’s star-forming history firsthand.
We confidently state that the Universe is known to be 13.8 billion years old, with an uncertainty of just 1%. Here’s how we know.
Every time our Universe cools below a critical threshold, we fall out of equilibrium. That’s the best thing that ever happened to us.
The strongest tests of curved space are only possible around the lowest-mass black holes of all. Their small event horizons are the key.
Our galactic home in the cosmos — the Milky Way — is only one of many trillions of galaxies within in the observable Universe. Do we have a twin?
The Universe is 13.8 billion years old, going back to the hot Big Bang. But was that truly the beginning, and is that truly its age?
It is humanity’s biggest step yet into the Solar System.
There’s the textbook answer, then there’s the real answer.
SpinLaunch will cleverly attempt to reach space with minimal rocket fuel. But will physics prevent a full-scale version from succeeding?
We cannot afford to dream about living on other worlds while we continue to destroy ours.
From astrobiology to geology, a Moon base could serve as a laboratory unlike anything on Earth.
The image you’re seeing isn’t a hole in the Universe, and the cosmic voids that do exist aren’t hole-like at all.
We think of physical reality as what objectively exists, independent of any observer. But relativity and quantum physics say otherwise.
It’s rare that one single image packs so much beauty and science simultaneously. This Hubble view of a nearby star-forming region has both.
Supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies gobble up whatever matter ventures too close, becoming active. Here’s how they work.
We’re used to scientists telling us about the math and physics behind astronomical events. But what does studying space make us feel?
You are trapped in time. You never live in the world as it is but only as you experience it as it was.
Astronomers have been looking for radio waves sent by a distant civilization for more than 60 years.
Humanity is in trouble. Here’s how aliens could help.
All across the Universe, planets come in a wide variety of sizes, masses, compositions, and temperatures. And most have rain and snow.
The ESA’s Gaia mission just broke the record for closest black hole by over 1,000 light-years. Is there an even closer one out there?
Science is for everyone, even those possessing strongly held beliefs that seem to conflict with the best available evidence.
IceCube just found an active galaxy in the nearby Universe, 47 million light-years away, through its neutrino emissions: a cosmic first.
Thanks to a couple of rovers, we know Mars was once blue.
We know the Universe is expanding, but scientists don’t agree on the rate. This is a legitimate problem.
Billions of years ago, the ever-increasing entropy must’ve been much lower: the past hypothesis. Here’s how cosmic inflation solves it.