The sun, our nearest star, never stops breathing. Every second of every day, it exhales a vast stream of charged particles that sweeps outward through the solar system at hundreds of kilometers per second. We call it the solar wind, and while that name conjures something gentle and constant, the reality is considerably more turbulent. […]

The criteria for finding an Earth-like planet unofficially comes down to two things: water and the habitable zone. But a phenomenon known as atmospheric escape often “escapes” the minds of many astronomy fans, and it turns out that atmospheric escape is one of the key characteristics for finding an Earth-like world. Although extensive research has […]

The astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen are preparing to launch into space on a trajectory that will make them the first humans to travel to the moon in over half a century.

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Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine looking at Earth from a distant star system, armed with a powerful telescope capable of capturing its reflected light. Could you tell the planet was alive? The answer, remarkably, might be yes and the clue would come from the color of the plants.

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Earth and the moon may look very different today, but they formed under similar conditions in space. In fact, a dominant hypothesis says that the early Earth was hit by a Mars-sized object, and it was this giant impact that spun off material to form the moon. But unlike Earth, the moon lacks plate tectonics […]

Planetary scientists have long debated where the material that formed Earth comes from. Despite its location in the inner solar system, they consider it likely that 6–40% of this material must have come from the outer solar system, i.e., beyond Jupiter. For a long time, material from the outer solar system was considered necessary to […]

Astronomers have discovered an exceptionally rare radio galaxy that has three distinct pairs of radio lobes. This system falls into a subpopulation of radio galaxies known as “triple-double” radio galaxies (TDRGs). Located nearly 7.5 billion light-years away, this unique system, cataloged as J022248−060934, is only the seventh known example of its kind. A paper outlining […]

Douglas Adams told us the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42. If only cosmology were so straightforward. Astronomers have been arguing for years about a number every bit as fundamental, and they still can’t agree on it.

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