Is humanity the sole inhabitant of the cosmos? This age-old question has persisted throughout our history. In the realm of modern astronomy, the inquiry delves into the search for extraterrestrial life. Are we, as a […]

For nearly seven decades, a plasmon known as Pines’ demon has remained a purely hypothetical feature of solid-state systems. Massless, neutral and unable to interact with light, this unusual quasiparticle is reckoned to play a […]

The European Space Agency (ESA) has revealed that a space debris removal mission’s target, a piece of debris called VESPA, was hit by a small unidentified object. This collision resulted in the release of new […]

Scientists sometimes make bold claims about where their research might lead, but the most weighty assertions are usually scaled back or forgotten entirely as new data becomes available. Several years ago, scientists at Fermilab suggested […]

Some planets cannot hold onto their atmospheres. It’s thought that most of whatever atmosphere Mars may have had was annihilated by the solar wind billions of years ago, even as Earth and Venus held on […]

Proto, a holographic communications startup based in California, has built a system capable of beaming just about anything from one location to another. Okay, maybe not literally—this isn’t Mike Teavee’s unfortunate turn of events at […]

One planet per orbit—that’s the way all the planets and exoplanets discovered so far operate, but that might not be universal. Scientists analyzing a solar system called PDS 70 say there’s evidence of more than […]

Enlarge / Most of the explanations for this phenomenon involve a neutron star, depicted above. These explanations are uniformly terrible. On Wednesday, researchers announced the discovery of a new astronomical enigma. The new object, GPM […]

Enlarge / A light, cheap space telescope design would make it possible to put many individual units in space at once. Astronomers have discovered more than 5,000 planets outside of the solar system to date. […]

Credit: NANOGrav Hello, folks, and welcome back to This Week in Space. Virgin Galactic made its debut commercial flight, and the European Space Agency is prepping its Euclid Space Telescope for launch this weekend. But […]

Enlarge / An artist’s composition of the Milky Way seen with a neutrino lens (blue). IceCube Collaboration/NSF/ESO Scientists with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory have unveiled a striking new image of our Milky Way galaxy as seen […]

There’s something really strange in the center of the Milky Way. The vicinity of a supermassive black hole is a pretty weird place to start with, but in 2020 astronomers found six objects orbiting Sagittarius […]

Cosmic rays showering down on Earth’s atmosphere are the basis of a new wireless alternative to GPS navigation. 2015 Hiroyuki K.M. Tanaka GPS is now a mainstay of daily life, helping us with navigation, tracking, […]

When discussing recently discovered exoplanets, one recurring observation stands out: Earth-sized planets are surprisingly rare among the thousands of confirmed worlds outside our solar system. While super-Earths and gas giants abound, the detection of a […]

Credit: ESO/Davide De Martin It’s hard to ignore Betelgeuse, which is one of the brightest stars in the sky. You’ve probably seen it up there, marking Orion’s shoulder, but it won’t be there forever. A […]

Generative AI has taken the world by storm and there’s no going back. On one hand, you have people who are excited about the tech and are looking to experience all the ways it will […]

Credit: Alexander Andrews/Unsplash When you visit a national park, monument, or another protected site, you’re bound to and harbored by laws that protect that landmark. Littering will earn you a fine, as will starting a […]

The James Webb Space Telescope is coming up on its first anniversary since coming online, and already it has peered back into the earliest eons of the universe. It has also focused on objects in […]

On Mar. 27, a planetary parade made up of Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Mars and Uranus will march across the sky.(Image credit: brightstars via Getty Images) On March 27, a planetary parade made up of Mercury, […]