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“Are We Alone in the Universe?” Winston Churchill’s Lost Extraterrestrial Essay Says No
The famed British statesman approached the question of alien life with a scientist’s mind
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The Best Books About Science of 2016
Take a journey to the edge of human knowledge and beyond with one of these mind-boggling page-turners
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Was the Speed of Light Even Faster in the Early Universe?
Physicists propose a way to test if light exceeded Einstein’s constant just after the Big Bang
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Behold: The World’s Largest Radio Telescope
The Atacama Large Millimeter Array, located in the Atacama Desert, is the product of a 20-year global effort by Europe, North America, and East Asia
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Why Theoretical Physicist Sylvester James Gates Sees No Conflict Between Science and Religion
“I got used to the idea that questions had answers.”
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There Are Ten Times as Many Galaxies as Previously Thought
By these latest estimates, two trillion galaxies are scattered throughout the vast universe
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Astrophysicist Mario Livio on the Intersection of Art and Science
The scientist considers both a response to the vastness of the universe
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Why the Universe Needs More Black and Latino Astronomers
Astronomy has one of the worst diversity rates of any scientific field. This Harvard program is trying to change that
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If Telescopes Are Time Machines, the JWST Will Take Us the Furthest Back Yet
The James Webb Space Telescope promises to peer back into the making of the first galaxies
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“Weak Lensing” Helps Astronomers Map the Mass of the Universe
By making galaxies a little bit brighter, it points the way to elusive galaxies and lets us detect that most mysterious of substances: dark matter
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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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Can Physicists Ever Prove the Multiverse Is Real?
Astronomers are arguing about whether they can trust this untested—and potentially untestable—idea
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Supermassive Black Holes May Be More Common Than Previously Thought
Astronomers have found a huge black hole in a “cosmic backwater,” opening the possiblity there could be many more in the universe
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Inside the Atom Smasher at CERN
What you can see on a tour of the largest particle collider in the world
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Astronomers Finally Tracked a Strange Radio Wave Burst to Its Source
With new insights into radio waves, scientists may be able to measure the mass of the universe
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Where Are All the Aliens? Taking Shelter From the Universe’s Radiation
Earlier life-forms across the cosmos may have faced thousands to millions of times the cosmic ray dose that we do today
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Poltergeist and Quijote Are Among the New Approved Names for Alien Planets
People in 45 countries submitted ideas for naming exoplanets and their host stars after legends and literature
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The Universe’s Oldest Stars Likely Lit Up Way Later Than Once Thought
Data gathered by the European Space Agency’s Planck telescope indicates that the universe was dark for about 550 million years after the big bang
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Top Space Pictures of the Week, From a Hubble Icon to Hungry Black Holes
Ghostly pillars, a dark nebula and a galaxy herd starred in some of the best image-driven stories released at a recent astronomy meeting
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What Is the Universe? Real Physics Has Some Mind-Bending Answers
Science says the universe could be a hologram, a computer program, a black hole or a bubble—and there are ways to check
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