Articles by Ben Turner, Live Science Staff Writer

Ben Turner is a U.K. based staff writer at Live Science. He covers physics and astronomy, among other topics like weird animals and climate change. He graduated from University College London with a degree in particle physics before training as a journalist. When he's not writing, Ben enjoys reading literature, playing the guitar and embarrassing himself with chess.

Articles by: Ben Turner

The HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured this photo of the Curiosity rover on April 18, 2021.

Curiosity rover discovers that evidence of past life on Mars may have been erased

By Ben Turner published 17 July 21

The findings from the Curiosity rover could help the Perseverance rover decide which samples to collect for later analysis.

NASA's Curiosity rover took this selfie while inside Mars' Gale crater on June 15, 2018, which was the 2,082nd Martian day, or sol, of the rover's mission.

'Alien burp' may have been detected on Mars by NASA's Curiosity rover

By Ben Turner last updated 16 July 21

Methane tends to only be made by biological life, so scientists are wondering if the source is from alien microbes.

China wants to launch asteroid-deflecting rockets to save Earth from Armageddon

By Ben Turner published 13 July 21

Although the asteroid, Bennu, only has a 1-in-2700 chance of hitting Earth, scientists are taking the risk seriously.

Two satellite images of the lake before (left) and after (right) its water vanished.

Enormous Antarctic lake vanishes in 3 days

By Ben Turner published 6 July 21

Scientists are concerned that increasing amounts of meltwater could be finding its way into the ocean.

The discovery was made from analysis of 30.6 million particle decays that took place in the Large Hadron Collider.

This 'charming' particle could have saved the universe

By Ben Turner published 27 June 21

The charm meson could answer why there's more matter than antimatter in the universe.

An artist's impression of the solar system, showing the four planets and their star.

When this star blows, its planets will be turned into enormous pinballs

By Ben Turner published 22 June 21

The researchers created a computer model to predict the ways the planets would scatter, finding that slight tweaks to starting positions lead to vastly different outcomes

The gravitational waves emitted by two black holes as they spiral into each other, shown in a simulation.

Famous Stephen Hawking theory about black holes confirmed

By Ben Turner published 21 June 21

Physicists analyzed data from the first ever gravitational waves detected to prove Hawking's theory, and think that even more could be discovered from studying the ripples in space-time.

Here, a few of the 100,000 stellar nurseries mapped in a new service from the ALMA radio telescope.

100,000 star nurseries mapped in first-of-its-kind survey

By Ben Turner published 20 June 21

The researchers say that they want to use the survey to better understand our own place in the universe.

The effect has been observed for the first time in a dense atomic cloud.

Physicists harness atomic 'dark states' to store light

By Ben Turner published 13 June 21

Physicists used optical tweezers to capture their gas clouds.

The giant gas cloud in the simulation is many millions of times more massive than our sun.

Watch this stunning Starforge simulation of a star being born

By Ben Turner published 23 May 21

Astrophysicists are using the simulation to learn how stars form, how they arrange themselves into galaxies, and how the heavy elements that are vital to complex life are forged.

The more accurate a clock gets, the more entropy it creates

More accurate clocks may add more disorder to the universe, scientists say

By Ben Turner published 19 May 21

The researchers found the result by studying a tiny, jiggling membrane. Their experiment could lay the groundwork for further tests of the laws of thermodynamics at the tiniest scales.

The map reveals a bright patch, a wake of stars, beneath the Milky Way's halo. In the bottom right, the Large Magellanic Cloud continues its orbit.

Astronomers chart invisible ocean of dark matter swirling outside the Milky Way

By Ben Turner published 8 May 21

Astronomers are hoping to use the wake of stars to test the existing theories of dark matter.

The researchers established the network using a complex system of lasers.

World's 1st multinode quantum network is a breakthrough for the quantum internet

By Ben Turner published 8 May 21

Researchers say the new network will be unhackable and able to coordinate systems to unprecedented levels. Many of the deeper implications, however, cannot be foreseen.

Long exposure star trail image taken at Hehuan Mountain, Taiwan.

Space junk is blocking our view of the stars, scientists say

By Ben Turner published 3 May 21

The increasing number of satellites and space debris orbiting Earth could prevent astronomers from making crucial discoveries.

In one galactic year, also known as a cosmic year, the sun orbits the Milky Way.

Astronomers detect a bright-blue bridge of stars, and it's about to blow

By Ben Turner last updated 26 September 22

Astrophysicists think a newly discovered region of the Milky Way could provide hints about the evolution of our galaxy and its potentially violent past.

A top view of the equipment used in the g-2 experiment at Fermilab. The experiment uses a muon beamline, electronic racks and superconducting magnetic storage ring cooled to minus 450 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 267 degrees Celsius) to study the wobble of muons.

A tiny, wobbling muon just shook particle physics to its core

By Ben Turner published 8 April 21

But this may not be the end of the story.

Makoto Fujiwara stands in front of ALPHA Experiment apparatus at CERN in Switzerland.

Antimatter cooled to near absolute zero by laser beam

By Ben Turner published 5 April 21

The scientists trapped the antimatter in a magnetic field to stop it from annihilating, before blasting it with a cooling laser.

An 'exploded' view of the Antikythera mechanism.

Scientists unlock the 'Cosmos' on the Antikythera Mechanism, the world's first computer

By Ben Turner published 24 March 21

Scientists may have finally made a complete digital model for the Cosmos panel of a 2,000-year-old mechanical device called the Antikythera mechanism that's believed to be the world's first computer.

Galaxy J0437+2456 is thought to be home to a supermassive, moving black hole.

A supermassive black hole is speeding through space, and astronomers don't know why

By Ben Turner published 21 March 21

A supermassive black hole is racing across the universe at 110,000 mph (177,000 km/h), and the astronomers who spotted it don't know why.

Two tiny gold spheres respond to each other's gravitational pull.

Physicists measure the tiniest gravitational force ever

By Ben Turner published 12 March 21

The experiment could be a trial for many more even smaller ones probing the long-kept secrets of quantum scale gravity.

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