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Stories from Jay Bennett

Despite statistical methods that help sports fans improve their brackets, the probability of a perfect bracket remains something of a mystery in mathematics.

The Mathematical Madness Behind a Perfect N.C.A.A. Basketball Bracket

Picking a perfect bracket is so unlikely that it will almost certainly never occur, even if March Madness continues for billions of years

Apollo 14 Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. assembles equipment on the lunar surface on February 6, 1971.

Earth’s Oldest Known Rock May Have Been Found on the Moon

Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space, collected the rock sample during Apollo 14

A picture taken on January 21, 2019 in Duisburg, Germany, shows a view of the Super Blood Moon above an industrial plant during a lunar eclipse.

Ten Stunning Photos of the Super Blood Wolf Moon Lunar Eclipse

A lunar eclipse was visible across much of the world last night, bathing the moon in a reddish glow

This image taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) is the most detailed of Ultima Thule returned so far by the New Horizons spacecraft. It was taken at 5:01 Universal Time on January 1, 2019, just 30 minutes before closest approach from a range of 18,000 miles (28,000 kilometers), with an original scale of 730 feet (140 meters) per pixel.

Behold the Most Distant Object Ever Visited by Spacecraft

The New Horizons spacecraft has transmitted images from its New Year’s Day approach back to Earth

Artist’s impression of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft encountering 2014 MU69, a Kuiper Belt object that orbits one billion miles (1.6 billion kilometers) beyond Pluto, on Jan. 1, 2019. With public input, the team has selected the nickname “Ultima Thule” for the object, which will be the most primitive and most distant world ever explored by spacecraft.

Ring in the New Year With NASA’s Most Distant Planetary Encounter in History

The New Horizons spacecraft is on final approach to the distant Kuiper Belt Object, Ultima Thule, and you can follow along live

The Ten Best Science Books of 2018

These titles explore the wide-ranging implications of new discoveries and experiments, while grounding them in historical context

One of NIST’s ytterbium optical lattice clocks.

Scientists Measure the Second With Record-Breaking Precision

A new generation of optical clocks are becoming ever more reliable as physicists work to redefine time

Illustration of NASA's InSight lander about to land on the surface of Mars.

Watch NASA Land the InSight Spacecraft on Mars

The InSight lander has successfully touched down on Mars

The NIST-4 Kibble balance, an electromagnetic weighing machine that is used to measure Planck's constant, and in turn, redefine the kilogram.

Scientists Are About to Redefine the Kilogram and Shake Up Our System of Measures

After more than 100 years of defining the kilogram according to a metal artifact, humanity is preparing to change the unit based on a constant of nature

Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong in First Man.

Smithsonian Curator Reflects on What ‘First Man’ Gets Right About Neil Armstrong’s Journey to the Moon

The new film lays bare the personal sacrifice and peril that accompanied NASA’s historic mission

Russian Soyuz rocket carrying astronauts Nick Hague and Aleksey Ovchinin lifts off on Thursday, October 11.

Astronauts Survive Emergency Landing After Russian Rocket Launch Fails

The two crew members landed safely in Kazakhstan after aborting the spaceflight to conduct a high-speed reentry procedure

An artist’s conception of a distant Solar System Planet X, which could be shaping the orbits of smaller extremely distant outer solar system objects like 2015 TG387.

New Discovery Stirs Up Signs of the Elusive Planet 9

A new minor planet called “the Goblin” is the second most distant known object in the solar system

The shiny, dark crust of a meteorite emerges from the snow during an ANSMET collection trip to Antarctica.

Space Rock Hunters Are About to Invade Antarctica

Scientists with the ANSMET program will endure six weeks near the South Pole during an annual field trip to find meteorites

An artist's rendering of the Pluto system seen from the surface of one of its moons.

Weird Orbital Behaviors Offer Clues to the Origins of Pluto’s Moons

Solving the mystery of these satellites could help astronomers understand “Tatooine” exoplanets that orbit binary stars

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