MOONSTRUCK Details of Charon, the largest of Pluto’s five moons, were finally seen clearly in 2015 when the New Horizons mission passed within 13,000 kilometers of Pluto’s surface.
SwRI/JHUAPL/NASA
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Magazine
In the April 14 SN: Killer heat, mass insect migrations, the latest Saturn updates, rethinking the Nobel Prize, tectonics on Venus, the science of mass shootings, ancient tool trends and more.
Atom & Cosmos
Topic Image Rail
UP, UP AND AWAY NASA’s TESS telescope launches from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on April 18 on a mission to search for planets orbiting nearby, bright stars.
NASA
HERE TODAY Violent collisions in the early solar system, illustrated here, probably broke apart would-be planets — but diamonds forged in those planets’ cores may have made it to Earth as meteorites.
Mark Garlick/Science Source
Atom & Cosmos
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Astronomy
The Name Game
Celebrity names now mark places on Pluto’s moon Charon
Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, now has 12 new names for its topological features.Science TickerDelayed launch of NASA’s next exoplanet hunter is now set for tonight
NASA’s next exoplanet hunter, TESS, launches today to seek planets in 85 percent of the sky. -
Cosmology
Reviews & Previews
Why the Nobel Prize might need a makeover
In Losing the Nobel Prize, astrophysicist Brian Keating discusses the downsides of science’s top honor.News in Brief
Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking dies at 76
Beyond his research contributions, Stephen Hawking popularized black holes and the deep questions of the cosmos. -
Planetary Science
News
This meteorite’s diamonds hint that it was born in a lost planet
Bits of metal nestled inside diamonds suggest the space rock could have formed in a Mars-sized protoplanet in the early solar system.News
Water may have killed Mars’ magnetic field
Extra hydrogen near the Red Planet’s iron core could have shut down convection. -
Particle Physics
News
The search for mysterious dark matter underdogs steps up
Dark matter particles called axions are finally being put to the test.News
The quest to identify the nature of the neutrino’s alter ego is heating up
The search is on for a rare nuclear decay that could prove neutrinos are their own antiparticles and shed light on the universe’s antimatter mystery. -
Exoplanets
Science TickerNASA’s TESS spacecraft launches to begin its exoplanet search
After reaching its orbit in about two months, the telescope will start scanning nearby stars telltale dips in light that signal a passing planet.News
AI has found an 8-planet system like ours in Kepler data
An AI spotted an eighth planet circling a distant star, unseating the solar system as the sole record-holder for most known planets. -
Astrobiology
News
Lasers squeezed iron to mimic the conditions of exoplanet cores
In the first experiment to measure what exoplanets might be like on the inside, scientists hit iron with 176 lasers at once.News
Americans would welcome alien life rather than fear it
Americans would probably take the discovery of extraterrestrial microbes pretty well.
