Ken Croswell

Ken Croswell has a Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University and is the author of eight books, including The Alchemy of the Heavens: Searching for Meaning in the Milky Way and The Lives of Stars.

All Stories by Ken Croswell

  1. Planetary Science

    Uranus emits more heat than previously thought

    Uranus radiates more energy than it gets from the sun, two new studies find — just as Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune do.

  2. Astronomy

    Some of Earth’s meteors are probably coming all the way from a neighboring star system

    The triple star system is sending comets, asteroids and meteors our way, and the number of interstellar objects entering the solar system will rise.

  3. Space

    A distant quasar’s black hole is oddly huge for its galaxy

    The black hole’s mass is over half that of all the stars in the surrounding galaxy, a record for any galaxy hosting a quasar.

  4. Planetary Science

    Saturn’s first Trojan asteroid has finally been discovered

    Saturn joins the sun’s other giant planets that have Trojans, space rocks that orbit along the same path.

  5. Astronomy

    The nearest midsized black hole might instead be a horde of lightweights

    Astronomers recently reported that the Milky Way star cluster Omega Centauri hosts an elusive type of black hole. A new study says it does not.

  6. Astronomy

    A distant quasar may be zapping all galaxies around itself

    Star formation has ceased within at least 16 million light-years of the quasar. A similar phenomenon may have fried the Milky Way when it was young.

  7. Astronomy

    The North Star is much heavier than previously thought

    Polaris is about five times as massive as the sun, new observations reveal. That’s around 50 percent heavier than what an earlier study found.

  8. Planetary Science

    Sulfur was key to the first water on Earth

    Hydrogen bonded with sulfur may have given our world its first water after the hydrogen broke away and joined with oxygen in the planet’s crust.

  9. Astronomy

    The black hole–powered jet in galaxy M87 is making stars explode

    Hubble Space Telescope data show a surprising number of nova blasts along the jet of high-speed gas coming from the galaxy M87.

  10. Astronomy

    Jupiter-sized planets are very rare around the least massive stars

    A six-year search of 200 nearby low-mass red dwarf stars found no Jupiter-like planets, boosting the standard theory for how such planets form.

  11. Planetary Science

    Saturn’s icy rings are probably heating its atmosphere, giving it an ultraviolet glow

    Detecting similar emission from a distant world could help astronomers find other planets that boast bright and beautiful rings.

  12. Astronomy

    The Milky Way may be spawning many more stars than astronomers had thought

    Glowing radioactive debris from massive stars indicates our galaxy mints 10 to 20 new stars a year — double to quadruple the standard number.