Where Does Gold Come From? The Kilonova Answer
Every gold atom on Earth was forged when two neutron stars collided before our solar system formed. The 2017 kilonova GW170817 proved it.
Journal
Journal
The Day the Universe Rang Like a Bell
On September 14, 2015, LIGO detected a ripple in spacetime from two black holes colliding 1.3 billion years ago. The story of how we learned...
Two Machines Are Still Moving 47 Years After We Let Them Go
Voyager 1 and 2 have been traveling for 47 years and are now in interstellar space. The Golden Record they carry may outlast the Earth...
There May Be Life Beneath the Ice of Europa
Beneath Europa's ice shell lies an ocean with more water than Earth. Europa Clipper is on its way to find out if anything lives there.
Inside a Black Hole, Gravity Stops Being a Force and Becomes Geometry
From Karl Schwarzschild's battlefield equations to the first photograph of M87's shadow — how black holes went from mathematical curiosity to observed reality.
We've Found Six Thousand Worlds We Never Knew About
From pulsars to hot Jupiters to Earth-sized worlds in habitable zones — how we discovered 6,000+ exoplanets and what their atmospheres reveal.
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.
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...
Most of the Universe Is Missing — We Still Can't Find It
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, CXC Eighty-five percent of all the matter in the universe is something we have never seen, never touched, never caught...