A Day on Venus Is Longer Than Its Year
Venus takes 243 days to spin but only 225 to orbit the Sun. It also spins backwards. An interactive guide to the paradox of our...
Journal
Journal
Mars Isn't Actually Red — We've Been Seeing It Wrong
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS If you stood on Mars right now, you would not see the planet you think you know. The red marble from your school...
Pluto Got Demoted Because Its Own Neighborhood Betrayed It
Image: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute You grew up with nine planets. You learned their names in order, probably to a mnemonic,...
The Sun Will Die — Here's the Exact Timeline
Image: ESO/S. Steinhöfel Somewhere around five billion years from now, the Sun will run out of hydrogen fuel in its core and begin to die....
After 200 Years, We've Finally Seen Uranus's Auroras Glow
JWST captured the first clear images of auroras on Uranus — glowing rings around a sideways magnetosphere unlike anything in our solar system.
A Lemon-Shaped Planet Orbits a Dead Star — Made of Diamond
A pulsar's gravity squeezes a companion into a lemon. Inside, carbon crystallises into diamond. The strangest planet ever found.
Europa Clipper Is Looking for an Ocean Buried Under Ice
Europa Clipper is hunting for an ocean hidden beneath 15 km of ice on Jupiter's moon. 49 flybys to find out if anything is swimming.
This Planet Would Smell Like Rotten Eggs and Bleed Lava
JWST detected sulfur dioxide on a planet 35 light-years away. Its surface is a magma ocean. It smells like rotten eggs across the void.
Perseverance Found Something on Mars That Might Be a Fossil
Perseverance found organic molecules in Jezero Crater. Mars has been keeping secrets — and we are finally close enough to read them.