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Special Report
Life in the Cosmos
Exploring the mysteries of the universe
Life in the Cosmos
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How Astrophysicists Found a Black Hole Where No One Else Could
A new method could help scientists peer inside universe's densest star clusters to find undiscovered black holes
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The Story of the Astrolabe, the Original Smartphone
Prosperous times likely paved the way for this multifunctional device, conceptual ancestor to the iPhone 7
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Introducing the Global Effort to Map the Night Sky
How astronomers around the world are piecing together a patchwork quilt of celestial activity
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The Hidden Connections Between Darwin and the Physicist Who Championed Entropy
These magnificently bearded men both introduced a dose of randomness and irreversibility into the universe
The Search for Life
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A Mars Rover Found Building Blocks of Life Never Seen on the Red Planet Before, Boosting the Case for Ancient Habitability
The organic molecules discovered by NASA’s Curiosity rover could have been formed by life, but they could have also come from geologic processes or meteorites
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Lightning Strikes on Jupiter Are 100 Times as Powerful as Those on Earth, a New Study Suggests
Scientists finally have a clearer picture of the gas giant’s intense storms
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Alien Life Could Look Nothing Like What We Expect. Here’s How Microbes Beyond Earth Might Live Without Liquid Water
Like the lead character of “Project Hail Mary,” some scientists are proposing ways that life might exist beyond a star’s “habitable zone,” often considered the gold standard of potential livability
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These Sea Slugs Can ‘Eat’ Sunlight—but They’re No Astrophage. Here’s How the ‘Project Hail Mary’ Antagonist Has a Real-Life Analogue in Earth’s Oceans
By snatching chloroplasts from algae, animals called sacoglossans produce their own energy through photosynthesis
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Life’s Genetic Code Requires Five Key Ingredients. The Asteroid Ryugu Has All of Them, a New Study Suggests
The findings further hint that space rocks may have brought the building blocks of RNA and DNA to Earth long ago
Past, Present, Future
The Story of the Astrolabe, the Original Smartphone
Prosperous times likely paved the way for this multifunctional device, conceptual ancestor to the iPhone 7
The Hidden Connections Between Darwin and the Physicist Who Championed Entropy
These magnificently bearded men both introduced a dose of randomness and irreversibility into the universe
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Astronomers Have Found the Brightest Supernova Yet
The powerful blast is so weird that it could be a whole new kind of star explosion
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Watch the Universe Evolve Over 13 Billion Years
A new computer simulation, called Illustris, can take you on an epic journey through space and time
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What Does the Future of the Universe Hold?
The collision of our galaxy with the Andromeda galaxy is billions of years away, but it’s never too early to wonder what will happen
How We Explore
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India Lands a Spacecraft Near the Moon’s South Pole, a First in Lunar Exploration
No other mission has successfully touched down in this scientifically interesting moon region, which contains water ice in lunar craters
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NASA Releases First Breathtaking Images Taken by James Webb Space Telescope
The five pictures from the most powerful space observatory ever launched offer a deep look back in time and the promise of stellar things to come
Introducing the Global Effort to Map the Night Sky
How astronomers around the world are piecing together a patchwork quilt of celestial activity
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The Hunt for High-Energy Photons Takes Place From a Mountaintop in Mexico
A new telescope built from water tanks might help answer some of the biggest questions in astronomy
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The Detection of Gravitational Waves Was a Scientific Breakthrough, but What’s Next?
Scientists are sitting on top of the world after this monumental discovery and are eager to keep exploring the universe
Galaxies, Quasars, Clusters
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This Is the Largest, Most Detailed 3D Map of the Universe. It’ll Help Astronomers Investigate a Cosmic Mystery: Dark Energy
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument spent five years observing the sky from Arizona. Now, researchers have a trove of data to study how the universe has evolved over billions of years
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Astronomers Discover a Rare Primitive Star That Provides a Chemical Snapshot of the Early Universe
PicII-503 is likely a second-generation star, born from the remnants of the very first stars, according to a new study
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Astronomers Spot a Huge Cluster of Galaxies Forming Earlier in Cosmic History Than Thought Possible
The young galaxy cluster existed about 12.8 billion years ago and has an estimated mass 20 trillion times that of the sun
Understanding the Cosmos
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The Ten Best Science Books of 2025
From “experimental archaeology” to the mysterious appeal of exploration, the wide-ranging subjects detailed in these titles captivated Smithsonian magazine’s science contributors this year
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Astronomers Discover a Giant, Glowing Molecular Cloud Hidden in Earth’s Cosmic Neighborhood
The cloud, named Eos after the Greek goddess of dawn, had eluded researchers because it contains very little carbon monoxide
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Scientists Detect ‘Unexpected’ Oxygen in the Most Distant Galaxy Ever Found, Defying Ideas About the Early Universe
The findings suggest galaxies formed much more quickly than astronomers assumed