Astronomy

When the New Horizons spacecraft swept past Pluto and Charon in 2015, it revealed two amazingly complex worlds and an active atmosphere on Pluto. Those snapshots redefined our understanding of the system. Now, new observations using the James Webb Space Telescope taken over the space of a week, show that Pluto's atmosphere is completely different from any other one in the Solar System.

As the years go by, the chance of Europa hosting life seems to keep going down. But it's not out of contention yet.

On the surface (you're welcome for the joke), Venus is not even close to being hospitable to life. But that's not the end of the story.

Chinese rocket startup Space Epoch put on a show recently, with a demonstration test launch of their reusable Yanxinghe-1 rocket booster.

Mars is by far the most Earth-like planet in the solar system…but that's not saying much.

During recent protests in Los Angeles, fires triggered “thermal runaway” in several Waymo robotaxis’ lithium-ion battery packs. The phenomenon sent temperatures past 1,000 degrees Celsius, vaporized much of the cars and spewed lung-searing hydrogen fluoride

Asteroid 2024 YR4, once the highest impact risk ever recorded, now poses no threat to Earth but has a slightly increased chance of striking the moon in 2032.

Mizar, a star in the Big Dipper's handle, has a tiny companion. This star, Alcor, was known to the ancients. The pair was popularly known as the "Horse and Rider."

Bungie's next game is a return to the Marathon universe, but it's not what fans of the series were expecting. Here's everything we know so far.

SpaceX launched 26 Starlink satellites to orbit from California on Sunday (June 8), on the 70th mission of 2025 for the company's Falcon 9 rocket.

Here's the surprising math at the heart of auction theory

Amid a patchwork of fields, towns, and winding rivers and roads in central Brazil stands a monolithic oval-shaped plateau. This conspicuous feature, the Serra de Caldas (also known as the Caldas Novas dome and Caldas Ridge), is perched about 300 meters (1,000 feet) above the surrounding landscape in the state of Goiás.

Our ability to study faint radio signals from when the first stars began to form is being threatened by SpaceX's Starlink satellites, which seem to be unintentionally leaking radio signals that overpower astronomers' telescopes

Our ability to study faint radio signals from when the first stars began to form is being threatened by SpaceX's Starlink satellites, which seem to be unintentionally leaking radio signals that overpower astronomers' telescopes

To prevent Salmonella food poisoning, refrigerate your eggs, cook them well, never eat them raw and clean, clean, clean

In a recent paper, UCSB physicist Jack Kingdon identified a trajectory for a rapid transit (90 days) to Mars using SpaceX's Starship. This proposal offers an alternative to mission architectures that rely on nuclear propulsion to reduce transit times.

The challenge in the search for habitable worlds is clear. We need to be able to identify habitable worlds and distinguish between biotic and abiotic processes. Ideally, scientists would do this on entire populations of exoplanets rather than on a case-by-case basis. Exoplanets' natural thermostats might provide a way of doing this.

A new understanding of how tumours exploit our nervous system is leading to new ways to treat cancer using familiar drugs like Botox and beta blockers

A new understanding of how tumours exploit our nervous system is leading to new ways to treat cancer using familiar drugs like Botox and beta blockers

A sauropod dinosaur fossil has been found with preserved stomach contents for the first time, providing insights into what they ate and how