Astronomy
A New Non-toxic Propellant is Looking Promising
Believe it or not there are some people out there who think traditional rocket science is too easy and want…
Europa’s entire icy shell shifted 70-degrees a few million years ago
The mysterious world Europa, the ice-covered second moon of Jupiter, sports deep scars that cut across its face. An international…
Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” VIII: What is the Zoo Hypothesis?
Another possible resolution to the Fermi Paradox: we could all be living in some giant "nature preserve" where the aliens…
James Webb is Working Perfectly! On the Ground. Next Trick: Doing it From Space
The James Webb Space Telescope recently passed another critical milestone - the Ground Segment Test - and is on track…
Astronomers find 100 brown dwarfs in our neighborhood
Brown dwarfs are smallish objects sitting somewhere between stars and planets, making them notoriously hard to find. But a recent…
Beyond “Fermi’s Paradox” VII: What it the Planetarium Hypothesis
In this installment, we explore the possibility that we haven't heard from aliens because they've got us in a simulated…
Did a supernova cause the Devonian mass extinction event?
359 million years ago the Earth suffered one of its worst extinction events, and a team of researchers at the…
There Could Be More Rogue Planets Than Stars in the Milky Way. Here’s How Nancy Grace Will Find Them
Rogue planets are notoriously hard to detect, unless you’re the Jedi in an Extended Universe novel. So far we have…
One Theory Beyond the Standard Model Could Allow Wormholes that You Could Actually Fly Through
A new study by a team of theoretical astrophysicists shows that stable wormholes could exist, but don't expect them to…
We Have the Technology to Retrieve a Sample From an Interstellar Object Like Oumuamua
A white paper submitted to the 2023 - 2032 Decadal Survey recommends we create spacecraft that could rendezvous and take…