Latest articles by Keith Cooper
The sun's atmosphere is way hotter than its surface. Scientists may finally know why
NASA's Parker Solar Probe has found charged grains of dust being carried on magnetic plasma waves in the Sun's outer atmosphere, providing a new clue to the mystery of the Sun's corona is so hot.
More clues surface about the origins of interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS
Observations of the fast-moving interstellar comet with the Very Large Telescope in Chile support similar observations made by the JWST.
Astronomers discover radio signals coming from rare 'Blue Eye Pulsar' after decades of silence
Astronomers have detected radio signals coming from a long-dead neutron star known as the 'Blue Eye Pulsar' after searching for decades.
Astronomers discover a potentially habitable planet just 25 light-years away. 'This one is exciting'
Astronomers discovered a planet 25 light-years away that orbits within the habitable zone of its star that could potentially support liquid water and possibly life.
Mars may have once been filled with seas of magma that made the Red Planet habitable
Deep oceans of magma once sloshed about inside the crust of Mars, seismic measurements taken by NASA's InSight mission suggest.
America 250: How has telescope technology evolved since the dawn of the U.S.?
Optical telescopes have come a long way in the past two-and-a-half centuries — from the homemade telescope of William Herschel to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope.
James Webb Space Telescope catches 6 galaxies merging into one of the largest galaxies in the universe
A supermassive black hole is also coming together at the heart of this galaxy maelstrom.
Hubble Space Telescope images galaxy scientists thought was impossible to find
A faraway galaxy has been caught blowing away the cosmic fog of hydrogen that filled the universe once upon a time.
This ball of stars named Terzan 5 may be one of the Milky Way's original building blocks
Terzan 5 is a globular cluster with some unusual properties that have led a team of astronomers to suspect that it is more than meets the eye.
Juicy new details emerge about an asteroid NASA's Lucy spacecraft flew by last year
Evidence of chemical alteration by liquid water has been found on the asteroid Donaldjohanson, which formed further from the sun before being shoved inwards.
Live from the moon! How lasers connected us all to NASA's Artemis 2 astronauts on their epic lunar trip
A laser system, previously tested on board the International Space Station, helped to stream video directly from the Artemis 2 mission on its way around the moon.
How Japanese scientists sent a real-life Transformer to the moon
An autonomous rolling rover that was able to transform from a sphere into a robot successfully explored a small part of the moon in 2024.
Could the secret to black hole formation be locked away in this record-breaking ancient quasar?
The quasar existed 12.9 billion years ago and shows that supermassive black holes were able to age rapidly in the early universe.
How should we handle alien detection in a world of AI, deepfakes and social media? This committee is writing the rulebook
If and when SETI discovers alien life, then a revised Declaration of Principles guarantees that once the discovery has been verified, its disclosure will come soon thereafter.
Trouble near the Milky Way: The Large Magellanic Cloud is ripping its smaller neighbor galaxy apart
The Magellanic Clouds are a pair of dwarf galaxies passing the Milky Way probably for the first time, but as they move they have been interacting with each other for billions of years.
Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is blasting out a bunch of methane. Here's why that's weird
The James Webb Space Telescope observed a large amount of methane around 3I/ATLAS, revealing just how different it is from comets from our solar system.
Most exoplanets might be 'soot factories,' scientists say: 'Like you have a natural diesel engine'
A chemical engineer noticed that the spectra of the hazy atmosphere of mini-Neptune planets looked like the soot produced by combustion engines.
This star system creates a rare triple eclipse. Here's what that would look like
A triple star system in which the stars all eclipse one another from our vantage point is standing out as one of the best studied stellar trios.
Scientists locate source of mysterious radio signals after 20 year search: A vampire star and its victim
The origin of enigmatic long-period radio bursts has been shown to be from the clash of magnetic fields as a white dwarf steals matter from a close red dwarf star.
An ancient solar storm left clues in tree rings and a famous poet's diary: 'Red lights in the northern sky'
A Japanese poet wrote in his diary that "red lights" appeared in the sky over Kyoto. An analysis of tree rings suggests a powerful solar storm created the sight.
This exoplanet weather forecast by the James Webb Space Telescope calls for sandy skies and a clear (alien) sunset
Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have witnessed a cloudy morning dissipating to leave a clear sky by dusk on a distant hot Jupiter.
Scientists just solved a tricky asteroid-hopping spacecraft riddle
Plotting the optimal trajectory to visit multiple asteroids is a fiendishly difficult take on the Traveling Salesperson problem, but a new mathematical approach has succeeded in solving it.
Astronomers find interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS hiding in images taken before its official discovery
If the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory had begun its science validation phase a few weeks earlier, it might have been up and running in time to discover 3I/ATLAS first.
Scientists propose new way to find aliens — and we may already have a spacecraft that can help
Scientists say amino acids produced by life are distributed differently and more diversely than amino acids produced by non-living chemical reactions, thereby providing a truer signature of life.
