Elizabeth Rayne

A real-life version of Spock's home exoplanet in the 'Star Trek' universe has turned out to be nothing more than fiction.

There's apparently a dearth of close-orbiting Neptune-size planets in our galaxy, and two observation techniques are starting to explain why.

Amino acids, the building blocks of life, have been found in the nearly pristine Winchcombe meteorite.

Through what they call "galactic archaeology," astronomers trained an AI to detect the oldest stars hiding in the Milky Way's core.

NASA's NEO Surveyor, a telescope that will look for near-Earth asteroids, is now being built.

Opals, which contain a lot of water, have been found on Mars. They might be an indicator of past life and possibly a source of water for astronauts in the future.

An intense drought that has persisted on Earth for over two decades is now thought to have affected gravity wave activity where our planet's atmosphere meets outer space

Meteorites that fall to Earth are ancient time capsules, and scientists who merged two imaging techniques may be able to tell us if and how they brought water to Earth.

A structure in the heart of the Perseus galaxy cluster can now be seen as an otherworldly display of reds and blues thanks to a new technique that involves merging X-ray and radio data.

Astrophysicists tested a potential approach to determining the state of the matter inside a neutron star, a tricky feat.

Broccoli, algae and many other plants and microbes on Earth purge toxins by morphing them into gases that might be present in exoplanet atmospheres, signaling life.

Astronomers using NASA's Chandra Observatory to watch galaxy collisions in the cluster Abell 98 have found what may be evidence of the universe's missing matter.

Glowing in the Pegasus constellation are five apparently closely packed galaxies known as Stephan's Quintet — and they are whispering the secrets of galactic evolution to scientists.

These galaxies may look like they are performing a cosmic waltz, but the spirals are actually trapped in a dance of death that will someday end in a violent crash.

Auroras set off spectacular light shows in the night sky, but they are also illuminating another reason the ozone layer is being eaten away.

The discovery has also revealed star coordinates, meaning Hipparchus was the first to use them for determining the positions of those stars.

NASA astronauts will be spending time in a simulated lunar environment in the Arizona desert, to see what Artemis moon missions will face.

The moon is a lifeless rock, but despite no living thing ever having been found on its desolate surface, some forms of Earth life might be able to make it.

NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory was peering through eons and eons in September 2021 when it spotted a dramatic explosion, a gamma-ray burst that had gone off in the early universe.

A new map of 56,000 galaxies has helped researchers estimate the size and expansion rate of the universe with more precision than ever.

The first ever map of the Milky Way's "graveyard" reveals the galaxy sometimes ejects the corpses of its deceased stars, leaving them roaming the universe as rogue black holes and neutron stars.

Scientists revisiting a puzzling signal from the south pole of Mars have suggested a new potential explanation, and it doesn't bode well for hopes of finding liquid water on the Red Planet.

Mars may be a freeze-dried planet now, but once, it was supposedly (almost) another Earth, with flowing water that froze into hulking mountains of ice.

Solar storms can mess with Earth, but can they kick up a tsunami?