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It’s likely the planetesimal orbiting a white dwarf 410 light years away was the core of a minor planet caught in its immense gravity
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How Much Electricity Can Thunderstorms Produce?
Researchers used a cosmic ray detector to clock one storm in at a shocking 1.3 billion volts
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Streams of Stars Snaking Through the Galaxy Could Help Shine a Light on Dark Matter
When the Milky Way consumes another galaxy, tendrils of stellar streams survive the merger, containing clues about the universe’s mysterious unseen matter
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How Much Does the Milky Way Weigh?
Measurements from the Gaia satellite and Hubble Space Telescope show our galaxy tips the scales at about 1.5 trillion solar masses
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Planetary Smash-Up May Have Produced This Distant Iron Exoplanet
Computer simulations suggest Kepler 107c could have been formed when two rocky planets collided, stripping it down to its metal core
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Astrophysicist Mercedes Lopez-Morales Is Grooming the Next Generation of Planet Hunters
“The Daily Show” correspondent Roy Wood, Jr. talks with the astrophysicist about adrenaline, fear, curiosity and attracting younger generations to science
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We Finally Know How Long a Day on Saturn Is
By studying oscillations in the planet’s iconic rings, researchers have determined it takes Saturn 10 hours, 33 minutes and 38 seconds to rotate once
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Four Types of Stars That Will Not Exist for Billions or Even Trillions of Years
According to models of stellar evolution, certain types of stars need longer than the universe has existed to form
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Scientists Predict Sun Will One Day Turn Into Giant Crystal Ball
New observations of white dwarfs confirm theory that the star remnants transition into solid structures as they cool
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Meet Farout, the Solar System’s Most Distant Minor Planet
Observations suggest the object is 300 miles in diameter, pinkish-red and 3.5 times as far away from the sun as Pluto
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Solar Probe Sends Back First Image and Data From the Sun
The Parker Solar Probe survived its first swoop around our star and will get even closer on its next two dozen trips
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This Is How Much Starlight the Universe Has Produced
4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons over 13.7 billion years
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Astrophysicist Michelle Thaller on Understanding Our Place in the Universe
Autodesk vice president Brian Mathews talks with the NASA science communicator about the search for life on other planets and why it’s important
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The Milky Way Ate One of Its Neighbors 10 Billion Years Ago
Star data shows we gobbled up a galaxy called Gaia-Enceladus about 1/4 the size of the Milky Way, leaving behind telltale signs of the merger
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We Haven’t Been Zapped Out Of Existence Yet, So Other Dimensions Are Probably Super Tiny
In theory, other dimensions aren’t big enough to form black holes and consume our universe or it would have happened already
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Astronomers Find What May Be First Exomoon—And It’s an Absolute Unit
Astronomers suspect that there’s Neptune-sized celestial body trailing an exoplanet about 8,000 light years
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In the Search for Aliens, We’ve Only Analyzed a Small Pool in the Cosmic Ocean
A new study estimates how much of outer space we’ve scoured for other life and finds we haven’t exactly taken a deep dive
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Explorers Will Face Dangerous Amounts of Radiation On Their Trip to Mars
New data from the Mars Trace Gas Orbiter shows just the flight there and back alone will expose astronauts to 60 percent the lifetime radiation dose
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The Universe’s Strongest Material is a Cosmic Lasagna
A new study suggests that the “nuclear pasta” found in neutron stars is 10 billion times stronger than steel
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