The Universe Is Expanding at Two Different Speeds — And Both Are Right
Image: ESA and the Planck Collaboration Two teams of physicists have spent more than a decade measuring the same number. They are using the best...
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...
Some Craters on the Moon Haven't Seen Sunlight in 4 Billion Years
Image: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University Imagine a place 240,000 miles from where you sit right now. The temperature has dropped to minus 248 degrees Celsius: colder...
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,...
Something Is Pushing the Universe Apart — We Don't Know What
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI Something is pushing the universe apart. Not slowly, not gently, and not in the way anyone expected. The space between...
James Webb Is Sniffing the Atmospheres of Worlds We'll Never Reach
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI) The James Webb Space Telescope was not designed to find life. It was designed to see light, specifically...
Your Head Is Older Than Your Feet — Here's the Proof
Image: EHT Collaboration / ESO Right now, at this very moment, the top of your head is aging faster than the soles of your feet....
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 Solar Storm Once Set Telegraph Wires on Fire — It's Coming Back
Image: NASA/SDO The telegraph operator watched his paper catch fire. His machine was disconnected from its battery. It was the night of September 1, 1859,...