Charles Q. Choi

A strange white dwarf star hurtling through the Milky Way may be the survivor of a "partial supernova," a new study finds.

Earth's newborn moon may have possessed an ocean of magma for 200 million years, much longer than scientists thought, a new study finds.

A pulsar sheds light on a yearslong mystery from the first detected collision of neutron stars.

The brightest red dwarf star in the sky may be the best chance astronomers have yet to analyze the atmospheres of alien worlds — and perhaps detect whether those worlds have life, a new study finds.

Though Pluto is now famously frigid, it may have started off as a hot world that formed rapidly and violently, a new study finds.

Mysterious pulses of radio waves from deep space can fire in regular patterns, a discovery that might help shed light on the cause of these puzzling outbursts, a new study finds.

Scientists have generated an exotic form of matter in the unique microgravity environment aboard the International Space Station and are using it to explore the quantum world, a new study finds.

The mystery behind why the atmosphere of Venus spins much faster than the planet's surface may finally be solved, a new study finds.

A distant world about 40 times more massive than Earth may be the remnant core of a giant planet, or a giant planet in the making whose growth stalled, a new study reports.

An exoplanet may be shaped like an American football due to the mighty gravitational forces it experiences close to its star, a new study finds.

A cannonball that a Japanese spacecraft fired at an asteroid is shedding light on the most common type of asteroid in the solar system, a new study reports.

The rocky object that spawned the asteroid Ryugu may have been extraordinarily porous, a new study finds.

The moon and Earth may be more different than long thought, challenging existing models for how the moon formed, a new study finds.

A collision between a black hole and a neutron star would unleash huge amounts of energy, but it might not generate any detectable light, a surprising new study finds.

A giant white dwarf star may be the offspring of a collision between two other white dwarfs, a new study finds.

This big asteroid is seriously cratered.

The way the fabric of space and time swirls in a cosmic whirlpool around a dead star has confirmed yet another prediction from Einstein's theory of general relativity, a new study finds.

The outer layers of superdense stellar remnants known as white dwarfs may often possess the remains of giant planets, a new study suggests.

The explosion likely occurred within a dense shell of matter shed by a companion star.

Why is Mars dry? Water might escape the atmosphere more effectively than previously thought, potentially helping to explain how the Red Planet lost its vast oceans.

Spacecraft could fly to distant stars using sails with surfaces similar to those of CDs and DVDs to help them stay centered on laser beams, a new study finds.

Venus may still harbor active volcanoes, with eruptions taking place as recently as a few years ago, a new study finds.

Water appears both common and unexpectedly scarce in exoplanets — many distant worlds have it, but less of it than predicted, a new study finds.

The first image of a black hole, previously thought nigh impossible to capture, was named the top scientific breakthrough of 2019 by the journal Science.

For the first time, astronomers have gotten an up-close view of eruptions from an asteroid, shedding light on what might drive such explosions.