Carolyn Collins Petersen
JWST Sees Organic Molecules Swirling Around a Newborn Star
One of the most interesting questions we can ask is, "How did life form?". To answer it, scientists go back…
Watch the Chelyabinsk Meteor Breakup in this Detailed Simulation
The people of Chelyabinsk in Russia got the surprise of their lives on the morning of February 15, 2013. That's…
Planets Might Protect their Water Until their Star Settles Down
Creating rocky planets is a messy, dangerous, hot business. Planetesimals accrete together, which creates heat and pressure on the newborn…
The State of Suborbital Space Science
Think there's nothing to learn through suborbital flight and that space science is only done in orbit? Think again. Recently,…
What Time is It on the Moon? It May Get its Own Timezone
When the first people set foot on the Moon for long-term projects, they'll need a lot of things, including their…
The Neutron Star That Thinks It’s a Black Hole
Black holes and neutron stars are among the odder denizens of the cosmic zoo. They're both dense collections of matter…
Not Just Water. Enceladus is Also Blasting Silica Into Space
Deep beneath the icy surface of Saturn's moon Enceladus, something's happening that causes particles of icy silica to spew out…
A New Survey of the Sky Contains Over One Billion Galaxies
What contains a petabyte of data on more than a billion galaxies in one of the most extensive sky maps?…
Recreating the Extreme Forces of an Asteroid Impact in the Lab
About 50,000 years ago, a nickel-iron meteorite some 50 meters across plowed into the Pleistocene-era grasslands of what is now…
Supermassive Black Holes on a Collision Course
The early Universe was swimming with dwarf galaxies only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. They merged…