Charles Q. Choi

Distant X-rays may be the most direct evidence yet of the remains of a disintegrated planet colliding with the corpse of a star, a new study finds.

Astronomers may have for the first time detected and measured the mass of an isolated stellar-mass black hole, a new study finds.

A detailed new telescope image of the heart of our galaxy is now giving researchers their best view yet of hundreds of strange magnetic filaments seen nowhere else.

And scientists now have a better idea of where to find them.

Black holes can not only rip stars apart, but they can also trigger star formation, as scientists have now seen in a nearby dwarf galaxy.

Three billion years ago, the dusty planet we know today was a very different world.

Earth is surrounded by a vast bubble about 1,000 light-years wide whose borders drive the formation of all nearby young stars, a new study finds.

Earth and Mars must have formed from collisions between giant moon-sized rocks rather than from clumping together of a huge amount of tiny pebbles, a new study found.

Astronomers may have, for the first time, detected a sunlike star erupting with a giant outburst 10 times larger than anything similar ever seen from our sun.

A volcanic peak standing more than a mile high on Venus may still be active, new findings show.

Strange, newly theorized "eggshell planets" may possess super-thin outer layers with ultra-smooth surfaces unlike those seen on any world to date, a new study reports.

A new electric thruster that blasts out iodine just passed a key test in orbit, a milestone that could help lead to smaller, cheaper and higher-performance spacecraft engines.

The first operation to ever collide a spacecraft with an asteroid is set to launch Wednesday (Nov. 24) and will see whether humans can deflect a potentially disastrous cosmic impact.

The fastest spacecraft ever flown, NASA's Parker Solar Probe, regularly experiences high-speed collisions with dust particles that create explosions of plasma, a new study finds.

Future Mars astronauts could make rocket fuel on the Red Planet using air, water and sunlight, a new study finds. The technology could fuel the astronauts' flights back to Earth.

Potential evidence of extraterrestrial radio signals from Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth, were likely just interference from human technology, researchers say.

Astronomers may have for the first time detected evidence that a distant planet had its atmosphere partially blown away by a giant impact, a new study finds.

Mysterious radio signals may blast out from auroras on distant stars triggered by hidden planets, a new study finds.

Catastrophic floods from overflowing lakes on early Mars may have carved out many of the Red Planet's valleys, a new study finds.

Astronomers may have captured the best view yet of matter colliding with the surface of a young star, findings that may shed light on what the sun looked like in its youth.

Astronomers have uncovered evidence of explosions triggered by dead stars ramming into live stars, possible proof of a new type of supernova, a new study finds.

Mysterious repeating pulses of radio waves may come from a hitherto unknown kind of extraordinarily powerful cosmic magnet, and not pairs of stars as previously suggested, a new study finds.

Bright reflections that radar detected beneath the south pole of Mars may not be underground lakes as previously thought but deposits of clay instead, a new study finds.