All Stories by Christopher Crockett
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AstronomySun shines new life on Kepler space telescope
NASA approved a proposal to bring the crippled Kepler spacecraft back to life, using sunlight as balance to help the telescope search for planets and more.
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CosmologyDustup emerges over gravitational waves discovery
While cosmologists wait for data from Planck satellite, some worry that BICEP2 data actually come from our galaxy.
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AstronomySun’s sibling spotted
A nearby star may have come from the same birth cluster as the sun; learning how to find other solar siblings could point the way to their common origin.
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AstronomyMilky Way’s far side reveals some secrets
Variable stars provide first direct measurements of distance to the far side of the Milky Way.
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AstronomyMilky Way’s magnetic field mapped
The Planck telescope sees the galaxy’s magnetic field in polarized light bouncing off interstellar dust grains.
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CosmologyUniverse re-created in computer simulation
The Illustris Project traces the detailed evolution of the universe starting from 12 million years after the Big Bang.
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PhysicsGravity’s Ghost and Big Dog
Sociologist Harry Collins chronicles the occasionally heated (and often arcane) debates among scientists studying gravitational waves.
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AstronomyExoplanet spin measured for first time
Astronomers measure the spin of a planet outside our solar system, and its days are short: just over eight hours.
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AstronomyDistant swirling galaxy dwarfed by violent star killer
In a mosaic of images from a telescope in Chile, dark dust lanes and twisting tails betray a history of galactic collisions.
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AstronomyWhite dwarf boosts light of stellar companion
A gravitational lens in a binary star lets astronomers weigh the core of a dead star.
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AstronomyEarth-sized planet found in star’s habitable zone
Astronomers have found a potentially habitable Earth-sized planet around a cool red star.