All Stories by Christopher Crockett
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SpaceSalty water might exist on Mars, but it’s probably too cold for life
Salty liquids may last for several hours on the Red Planet but be too chilly for any known microorganisms from Earth to survive, simulations suggest.
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SpaceInterstellar comet Borisov has an unexpected amount of carbon monoxide
The second known visitor from outside the solar system has three times as much CO relative to H2O than any comet seen in the inner solar system.
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AstronomyNew images of the sun reveal superfine threads of glowing plasma
Snapshots from NASA’s High-Resolution Coronal Imager show thin filaments of plasma not seen before in the sun’s outer atmosphere.
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Astronomy‘Oumuamua might be a shard of a broken planet
A new origin story for the solar system’s first known interstellar visitor suggests it may have been part of a world that got shredded by its star.
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SpaceNew fleets of private satellites are clogging the night sky
As private companies launch dozens of satellites at a time, researchers are assessing the impact on ground-based telescopes.
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SpaceCecilia Payne-Gaposchkin revealed stars’ composition and broke gender barriers
The book ‘What Stars Are Made Of’ celebrates the life of astronomer Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.
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SpaceA black hole eruption marks the most powerful explosion ever spotted
Hundreds of millions of years ago, a black hole blasted out roughly 100 billion times as much energy as the sun is expected to emit in its lifetime.
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Planetary ScienceAn ancient magma ocean may have once driven Earth’s magnetic field
Computer simulations of molten silicate under extreme temperatures and pressures may have just filled in a gap in the history of Earth’s magnetism.
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SpaceWhat NASA’s InSight lander has learned about Mars’ magnetism and quakes
In its first 10 months, the InSight lander detected Marsquakes and an unexpectedly strong magnetic field at its landing site on the Red Planet.
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SpaceAn ancient galaxy grew massive — then oddly stopped making stars
After ferociously producing stars for a few hundred million years, this galaxy in the early universe gave up, and astronomers aren’t sure why.
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SpaceESA’s Solar Orbiter will be the first spacecraft to study the sun’s polar zones
ESA's Solar Orbiter is now on its way to the sun, beginning a nearly two-year journey.
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SpaceThis is the first fast radio burst known to have a steady beat
Brief blasts of radio energy from other galaxies keep stumping astronomers, but one seems to be on a 16-day cycle, a new clue in an ongoing puzzle.