Space
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Agriculture
Readers debate GMOs
Genetically-modified food, nuclear fusion, black holes and more reader feedback.
- Astronomy
Two chunks of the same comet buzzing Earth this week
Two comets, one a possible fragment of the other, will slip past Earth on March 21 and 22.
- Planetary Science
Comets carried noble gases to Earth
Asteroids might have delivered water to Earth, but comets could be responsible for noble gases and amino acids, a new study suggests.
- Astronomy
Quasars’ distance no longer in question
Astronomers now know quasars live around black holes in remote galaxies, but 50 years ago, one researcher argued they were much closer.
- Planetary Science
Get your Pluto trivia down cold
Eight months after visiting Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft has delivered a wealth of details about the dwarf planet and its family of moons.
- Planetary Science
Wandering Jupiter could have swept inner solar system clean
If Jupiter formed close to the sun and then wandered out, that might explain why there are no planets interior to Mercury’s orbit.
- Planetary Science
ExoMars mission to search for signs of life on the Red Planet
The next mission to Mars will tally gases in the planet’s atmosphere and test technologies for a 2018 rover.
- Astronomy
Black hole smashup generated yottawatts of power
For a split second, LIGO’s black hole collision generated 36 septillion yottawatts of power, or 50 times the power from all the stars in the universe.
- Neuroscience
Readers respond to stress, tattoos, and the universe
Stress, tattoos, cosmic origins and more reader feedback.
- Planetary Science
Mountains on Pluto are a winter wonderland of methane snow
On Pluto, methane snow blankets mountain tops.
- Planetary Science
Mercury’s dark secret revealed
Graphite from Mercury’s primordial crust might be responsible for making the innermost planet darker than the moon.
- Astronomy
A fast radio burst’s home galaxy may not be known after all
The recently claimed host galaxy of a fast radio burst may have been signs of a snacking black hole instead, study claims.
