Christopher Crockett is an Associate News Editor. He was formerly the astronomy writer from 2014 to 2017, and he has a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of California, Los Angeles.
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All Stories by Christopher Crockett
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Astronomy
Rocky, overweight planet shakes up theories
Kepler-10c is a rocky exoplanet 17 times as massive as Earth, and astronomers are puzzled as to how it formed.
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Planetary Science
Do-it-yourself solar system
If you've always wanted to build your own solar system, roll up your sleeves — SuperPlanetCrash is an online solar system simulator, set up as a game.
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Astronomy
Young, hot exoplanet takes title for longest year
Newly discovered exoplanet sits a whopping 2,000 times farther from its star than Earth does from the sun.
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Astronomy
Sun 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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Cosmology
Dustup 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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Astronomy
Sun’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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Astronomy
Milky 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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Astronomy
Milky 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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Cosmology
Universe 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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Cosmology
See the sky in a different light
An interactive map lets you explore the galaxy with infrared light.
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Physics
Gravity’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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Astronomy
Exoplanet 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.