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Science / Space

The Crab Pulsar, located in the Crab Nebula, is one of the celestial bodies Mickey Hart has translated into music.

Former Grateful Dead Drummer Mickey Hart Composes Music from the Sounds of the Universe

Hart teams up with a Nobel Prize-winning cosmologist to translate light and electromagnetic waves into octaves humans can hear

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How Did Mars Become the Red Planet?

A new NASA spacecraft, MAVEN, will explore the geologic history of our planetary neighbor

Analysis of Jake_M, the first rock Curiosity tested, shows that it’s unlike any rocks previously found on Mars, and probably formed after hot magma came into contact with water.

Curiosity Discovers a New Type of Martian Rock That Likely Formed Near Water

The rock closely resembles mugearites, which form after molten rock encounters liquid water

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Watch NASA’s Next Mars Orbiter Be Put Together, Piece by Piece

This time lapse video shows the assembly of NASA’s next Mars orbiter, MAVEN

Every 11 years, as part of the solar cycle, the Sun’s magnetic field flips, coinciding with a maximum in activity such as solar flares.

The Sun’s Magnetic Field Is About to Reverse

Every 11 years as part of the solar cycle, the Sun’s magnetic field flips. What’s in store for Earth when the field reverses a few months from now?

Planet of the apps: The Cooper-Hewitt will release the code behind Planetary, enabling everyone to adapt the software.

How Does a Museum Acquire an iPad App for its Collections?

The Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is making its first foray into design that you can’t actually see

Astronomers traced 2011 QF99, circled in green, across the sky to find that it shared an orbit with Uranus.

Temporary Companion Leads Uranus in Its Race Around the Sun

A small asteroid that orbits ahead of the seventh planet offers a clearer picture of the ongoing celestial pinball game in the solar system’s outer reaches

Could life on Earth have been born on Mars?

Cracking the Code of the Human Genome

Did Life Come to Earth From Mars?

Mineralogical clues point to the idea that the early Earth, starved of oxygen and submerged by a vast ocean, needed molecules from Mars to kick start life

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One Physicist Thinks the Universe Is Not Expanding—And He Might Not Be Crazy

Christof Wetterich can also explain the “red shift” that supports the idea of the Big Bang

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Cosmic Portraits Created From Hubble Space Telescope Images

Sergio Albiac generates images of people by collecting their head shots and replacing pixels with snippets from pictures of stars and galaxies

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The Evolution of the Spacesuit

The traveling exhibition “Suited for Space” depicts spacesuits through the ages

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Last Meal on Earth: What Astronauts Eat on Launch Day

One NASA instructor’s Cubans and empanadas became a Kennedy Space Center tradition

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The End of the World Might Just Look Like This

Artist Ron Miller presents several scenarios—most of them scientifically plausible—of landscapes imperiled and of Earth meeting its demise

Two neutron stars violently collide—potentially the sourse of all heavy elements in the universe, including gold.

All the Gold in the Universe Could Come From the Collisions of Neutron Stars

When two stars recently collided, astronomers landed on a new theory about where gold and other heavy elements originate

Fueling the trip to the exoplanet Gliese 667Cd, discovered earlier this week, would be one of humankind’s greatest challenges to date. Above is an artist’s rendering of a view from the planet.

Powering the 21st Century

Can We Power a Space Mission To An Exoplanet?

Ion engines, solar sails, antimatter rockets, nuclear fusion—several current and future technologies could someday help us fuel an interstellar journey

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The Big Bang: Enthralling Photos of Exploding Bullets

Houston photographer Deborah Bay captures the violent power of projectiles lodged in bulletproof plexiglass

Can this little thing really ride hurricane winds?

How Swarming Drones Can Explore a Hurricane

A University of Florida engineer is building a squadron of hand-sized drones that he says will be able to gather data as they ride on hurricane winds

Water may have come to earth by way of comets and asteroids.

Ask Smithsonian 2017

How Did Water Come to Earth?

It took an out-of-this-world arrival to get that perfect chemical combination for water to fill our planet

Lisa Randall is the first female theoretical physicist tenured at Harvard.

Lisa Randall’s Guide to the Galaxy

The famed cosmologist unveils her latest theories on the invisible universe, extra dimensions and human consciousness

As part of the Star Songs project, X-ray emissions from the EX Hydrae system (above, near center)—in which one star pulls matter from its partner—are converted into music.

How to Convert X-Rays From A Distant Star into Blues, Jazz and Classical Music

A vision-impaired scientist, her coworker, and a composer team up to transform light bursts from stars into rhythms and melodies

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