Astronomy
- Astronomy
Largest rocky world found
A planet roughly half the size of Neptune might be 100 percent rock, making it the largest known rocky world.
- Astronomy
Odd star’s dimming not aliens’ doing
A star’s flickering light and century-long dimming have astronomers hunting for exocomet storms, prowling dust clouds and even alien engineers.
- Archaeology
Babylonians used geometry to track Jupiter’s movements
Babylonians took a geometric leap to track Jupiter’s movements long before European astronomers did.
- Cosmology
‘The Cosmic Web’ weaves tale of universe’s architecture
A new book chronicles the quest over the last century to understand how the universe is pieced together and how it came to be this way.
- Astronomy
Middleweight black hole suspected near Milky Way’s center
A gas cloud in the center of the galaxy might be temporarily hosting the second most massive black hole known in the Milky Way.
- Astronomy
The votes are in: Exoplanets get new names
Arion, Galileo and Poltergeist are just three winners of a contest to name planets and suns in 20 solar systems.
- Astronomy
Exploding star is the brightest supernova ever seen
The brightest known supernova put out more energy than 500 billion suns.
- Astronomy
As first run of gravitational wave search winds down, rumors abound
Advanced LIGO has completed its first search for gravitational waves. Researchers are crunching the data as rumors swirl of a detection.
- Astronomy
Readers ponder mysterious origins of oxygen on comets and Earth
Readers pondered the origins of oxygen within a comet and during Earth's history.
- Astronomy
Clues left at a galactic hit-and-run
Scientists may have discovered a dwarf galaxy that triggered a “galaxy quake” when it buzzed by the Milky Way a few hundred million years ago.
- Astronomy
Red giants map how the Milky Way grew
A new catalog of the ages of our galaxy’s stars confirms that the Milky Way grew from the inside out.
- Astronomy
Newfound gas cloud may be graveyard of first stars
A 12-billion-year-old gas cloud, rich in hydrogen and helium but nothing else, may house the remains of the universe’s first stars.
