All Stories by Lisa Grossman
- Astronomy
The Milky Way feasted on a smaller galaxy 10 billion years ago
The Milky Way swallowed another galaxy billions of years ago, and the leftover stars are still roaming the sky.
- Astronomy
The planet-hunting Kepler space telescope is dead
The Kepler space telescope is officially out of fuel and will hunt planets no more, NASA announced.
- Planetary Science
Saturn’s moon Dione has stripes like no others in the solar system
Icy moon Dione has long, thin, bright lines at its equator that run surprisingly parallel to each other for tens to hundreds of kilometers.
- Particle Physics
What the electron’s near-perfect roundness means for new physics
The electron remains stubbornly round, meaning we may need to build beyond the Large Hadron Collider to find physics outside of the standard model.
- Astronomy
The Neil Armstrong biopic ‘First Man’ captures early spaceflight’s terror
At a time when NASA is considering how to return astronauts to the moon, ‘First Man’ is a sobering reminder of how risky the first giant leap was.
- Astronomy
The first observed wimpy supernova may have birthed a neutron star duo
Scientists have spotted a faint, fast supernova for the first time, possibly explaining how pairs of dense stellar corpses called neutron stars form.
- Astronomy
If the past is a guide, Hubble’s new trouble won’t doom the space telescope
Hubble is in safe mode, but astronomers are optimistic that the observatory will keep working.
- Cosmology
The universe’s continued existence implies extra dimensions are tiny
The strictest limits yet on the size of extra dimensions come from the fact that black holes haven't destroyed the universe.
- Astronomy
Hubble may have spotted the first known exomoon
A single sighting with the Hubble Space Telescope seems to confirm that there’s a Neptune-sized moon orbiting exoplanet Kepler 1625b.
- Physics
Groundbreaking ways of manipulating light win trio the 2018 physics Nobel
Three scientists, including the third woman to win a physics Nobel, are honored for their laser inventions.
- Astronomy
We may not have found aliens yet because we’ve barely begun looking
A new calculation says SETI searches have combed the equivalent of a hot tub out of Earth’s oceans looking for extraterrestrial intelligence in space.
- Astronomy
Paula Jofré makes stellar connections
Astrophysicist Paula Jofré is a galactic archaeologist, mapping out generations of stars.
