Dead Stars That Tick Like Clocks and Outlast Civilizations
A collapsed star the size of a city, spinning hundreds of times per second, keeping time more precisely than atomic clocks. How pulsars work.
Journal
Journal
We Thought We'd Found Aliens — It Was a Dead Star Ticking
Image: NASA/CXC/SAO Somewhere in the northern sky, a collapsed star the size of a city is spinning on its axis once every 1.337 seconds. It...
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....
A Planet Is Being Born Right Now — And We're Watching It Happen
JWST captures a protoplanet forming in real time inside a young star's disc. We are watching planetary birth as it happens.
A Dead Star Shook Earth's Atmosphere From 50,000 Light-Years Away
A dead star 50,000 light-years away shook Earth's magnetosphere in 0.2 seconds. Magnetars are the most magnetic objects in the universe.
Every Gram of Gold on Earth Came From Two Dead Stars Colliding
Every gold atom on Earth was forged when two neutron stars collided. The kilonova that made your ring happened before the Sun was born.
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.
87 Ghost Rivers Are Flowing Through the Milky Way
87 streams of stars torn from ancient galaxies thread through the Milky Way. They are fossil rivers — evidence of collisions billions of years old.
For the First Time, We Can See Planets Being Born Edge-On
JWST captured the first edge-on view of protoplanetary discs — planet-forming rings of gas and dust seen from the side for the first time.