When the most influential tech billionaire in the world and the U.S. president square off in a high-stakes game of political brinkmanship, what results? The response appears to compromise America’s supremacy in space. An explosive conflict between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump over a tax bill descended into threats last week that might compromise ...
Cosmologists have believed for a long time that dark energy the mysterious factor that accelerates the expansion of the universe–was a constant, indestructible presence. However, the latest information obtained from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) indicates this is not the situation. Instead, the impact of dark energy may diminish as time passes, a finding ...
Astronomers have been narrating a dramatic tale about the fate of our galaxy for more than a century: the Milky Way is relentlessly on collision with Andromeda, its enormous neighbor. Once judged unavoidable within 4–5 billion years, the cosmic smash-up would destroy spiral galaxies and create a new, shapeless elliptical galaxy known as “Milkomeda.” But ...
Mars’s rust-colored desserts, towering volcanoes, and tantalizing prospect of ancient life have enthralled people for millennia. Benevolent on its surface, though, lurks a far stranger secret rife with rotten eggs. Recent discoveries in science imply that the Martian core is not only an iron and nickel molten ball like that of Earth. Rather, it might ...
Mercury’s moon Scientists have long been enthralled with Europa as one of the most likely locations to find life other than Earth. Now, ground-breaking James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations show that its icy surface is far more dynamic than first thought shifting, cracking, and recrystallizing in a few weeks. These quick changes imply that ...
A recently discovered celestial body is rewriting our knowledge of the Kuiper Belt and maybe challenging the existence of the elusive Planet Nine deep in the cold margins of our solar system. Called 2017 OF 201, this mysterious trans-Neptunian object (TNO) has an orbit so extreme it takes 25,000 years to complete one trip around ...
Today Mars is a frozen desert devoid of flowing water and with a rusty surface scuffed by dust storms. But billions of years ago, the Red Planet might have been a planet of rushing rivers, glittering lakes, even rain or snow falling from alien heavens. Suggesting Mars was far wetter and maybe warmer than previously ...
SpaceX’s Starship Flight 8 erupted in fireballs across the Atlantic Ocean on March 6 2025, the show was evident across Florida all the way to the Caribbean and was an eerie reminder of the difficult and gruelling challenges of rocket science. Behind the dramatic nature of the explosion is a fascinating story of engineering-related detective ...
New research has uncovered the key players responsible for illuminating the early universe. Scientists have long debated what caused the transition from cosmic darkness to the era of reionization, when light could finally travel freely through space. Recent findings suggest that small dwarf galaxies played an important role in clearing the dense hydrogen fog that ...
