Astronomers find compelling new evidence of the first stars formed after the Big Bang
A faint glow of helium, hanging near one of the earliest known galaxies, may be the clearest sign…
Scientists develop laser-powered graphene propulsion for next-generation space travel
A laser hit the tiny black cube, and it lurched forward almost at once. That split-second jump, caught…
The coldest ever hunt for dark matter has begun deep underground
Two kilometres underground near Sudbury, Ont., a machine has reached a temperature so low it barely seems real.…
Frozen ocean world found lurking between Mars and Jupiter
The scars on Ceres should have softened by now. That was the long-running problem. If the dwarf planet’s…
Do planets inherit their chemical structure from their stars?
Far beyond the reach of any spacecraft, a distant world glows with heat so intense that rock itself…
Pristine star reveals the dawn of stars and galaxies in the universe
The spectrum looked almost empty. That was the clue. In the faint light from a red giant star…
Gravitational waves may be responsible for dark matter in the universe
Dark matter is thought to exist everywhere, wrapping around galaxies and helping to shape the largest things in…
Light can travel for billions of years yet experience no time
A photon emitted from a star a billion light-years away arrives at a telescope having experienced no time…
Groundbreaking new theory rewrites quantum view of the Big Bang
A Gravity Theory That Could Rewrite the Universe’s First Moments The first fraction of a second after the…
NASA’s moon program signals a shift in who gets to explore space
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla – Before the rockets. Before the moon landings. There were the names. NASA’s most…
The physics of no return: What actually happens if you get pulled into a black hole
In 1916, only a year after Albert Einstein had published his general theory of relativity, Karl Schwarzschild used…
America’s nuclear spacecraft is heading to Mars, and it’s bringing helicopters
For decades, nuclear propulsion has been a fixture of aerospace engineering proposals and government studies, always promising, never…