Meteors streak through the sky over Texas in this photo captured by Tony Corso during the Geminid meteor shower in December 2017. When meteor enthusiasts think of the month of December, they immediately conjure up visions of the Geminids. Over…
Leia and R2-D2 in the first “Star Wars” film, “A New Hope.” Movie-goers didn’t know what was waiting for them when “Star Wars” first opened in theaters on May 25, 1977. This Western in space showed dogfighting spacecraft, vehicles traveling…
A NASA illustration of a neutron star surrounded by its accretion disk. A new study suggests that gamma-ray bursts from colliding neutron stars could release deadly radiation at a far wider angle than previously thought. Gamma-ray bursts are among the…
Space-time is the conceptual model that best explains how the universe works. The fabric of space-time is a conceptual model combining the three dimensions of space with the fourth dimension of time. According to the best of current physical theories,…
An illustration of the International Date Line. The International Date Line (IDL) is an imaginary — and arbitrary — line on Earth’s surface that runs from the North Pole to the South Pole. When you cross the IDL, the day…
A panoramic image shows the Milky Way, our home galaxy. Nineteen newly discovered dwarf galaxies seem to be missing their dark matter, and physicists aren’t sure why. The find dramatically increases the number of galaxies that appear to be missing…
Data from the Planck satellite reveals the cosmic microwave background. The shape of the universe is one of the most important questions in cosmology, with far-reaching implications, up to and including the ultimate fate of the cosmos. For decades, we’ve…
A NASA illustration shows the Parker Solar Probe diving heat shield-first toward the sun. The probe’s elliptical orbit will take it closer and closer to the solar surface on every pass. The first mission to the sun has reached the…
A student just solved the mystery of why bubbles appear stuck in thin vertical tubes. A university student recently solved a question that’s puzzled physicists for over half a century: Why do gas bubbles appear to get stuck inside narrow…
An artist’s illustration of two black holes merging and creating ripples in spacetime known as gravitational waves. Gravitational waves slosh throughout the universe as ripples in space-time produced by some of the most cataclysmic events possible. With facilities like the…
Our universe is governed by four fundamental forces. At least that’s what physicists have long thought. Now, however, new research suggests that there’s a fifth force, a discovery that could upend much of modern physics. On Oct. 23, researchers at the…
An artist’s rendering shows the ClearSpace-1 satellite using its robotic arms to capture the conical piece of space debris called Vespa. The largest garbage dump on Earth might be in space. In low Earth orbit — the space around our…