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.
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All Stories by Ken Croswell
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Astronomy
How ‘hot Jupiters’ may get their weirdly tight orbits
Gravitational kicks from other planets and stars can send giant worlds into orbits that bring them close to their suns.
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Astronomy
Two stars’ close encounter may explain a cosmic flare that has barely faded
A brilliant outburst of light that has lasted nearly a century arose when two young stars skirted past each other, simulations suggest.
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Astronomy
How massive stars in binary systems turn into carbon factories
A massive star with an orbiting partner star ejects on average twice as much carbon, an element crucial for life, into space compared with a solo star.
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Astronomy
Distant rocky planets may have exotic chemical makeups that don’t resemble Earth’s
Elements sprinkled on white dwarf stars suggest that the mantles of faraway rocky worlds differ greatly from their counterparts in our solar system.
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Astronomy
A Jupiter-like planet orbiting a white dwarf hints at our solar system’s future
A new planet is the first ever discovered that is orbiting a white dwarf and resembles Jupiter in both its mass and its distance from its star.
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Astronomy
The fastest-spinning white dwarf ever seen rotates once every 25 seconds
A white dwarf star that spins every 25 seconds owes its record-breaking rotation rate to a companion star dumping gas onto it.
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Astronomy
A supernova’s delayed reappearance could pin down how fast the universe expands
“SN Requiem” should reappear in the 2030s and help determine the universe’s expansion rate.
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Astronomy
Here’s how cool a star can be and still achieve lasting success
The dividing line between successful stars and failed ones is a surface temperature of about 1,200° to 1,400° Celsius, a new study reports.
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Astronomy
A shadowy birthplace may explain Jupiter’s strange chemistry
Dust that blocked sunlight caused the giant planet to form in a deep freeze, a new study suggests.
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Space
Most planets on tilted orbits pass over the poles of their suns
Nearly all of the worlds on misaligned trajectories in other solar systems orbit at nearly 90 degrees to their stars’ equators.
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Astronomy
Saturn has a fuzzy core, spread over more than half the planet’s diameter
Analysis of a wave in one of Saturn’s rings has revealed that the planet’s core is diffuse and bloated with lots of hydrogen and helium.
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Astronomy
A record-breaking, oxygen-starved galaxy may be full of gigantic stars’ shrapnel
The newly discovered galaxy may have once been home to stars more than 300 times as massive as the sun — a peek at conditions in the early universe.