Nola Taylor Tillman

IceCube principle investigator Francis Halzen discusses how the unique observatory was built and the plans for its future.

The global dust storm currently raging on Mars shouldn't disrupt the touchdown of NASA's InSight lander this fall, agency officials said.

Astronomers now have a much better idea of just how much the Milky Way weighs.

The hunt for E.T. may have gotten more difficult. New research suggests that alien life may not be as widespread as we had hoped.

A rare, midsize black hole has been spotted as it devours a star. Intermediate-mass black holes are typically challenging to spot; the new finding is the best observation to date.

The two-century-old mystery of what causes a star to dim for two years out of every 27 may be close to being solved, thanks to the ESA's Gaia spacecraft.

Violent collisions between two galaxies of equal sizes are more likely to power up both of the supermassive black holes at the galactic centers.

In a planetary-science first, astronomers used their knowledge of Jupiter's magnetic field to model what kinds of radio signals might be emitted naturally by the fields of smaller, rocky worlds.

Two new studies shed light on the cosmic dust that's likely responsible for the weird and dramatic dimming of "Tabby's star."

Small but rowdy space rocks pushing and jostling one another may have created the unusual orbits some astronomers cite as the signature of the hypothesized "Planet Nine," a new study suggests.

Cascades of black hole collisions could lead to the formation of more-massive black holes.

After a lifetime spent probing the hazardous environments around black holes and neutron stars, NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer met its fate, burning up in Earth's atmosphere.

Violent collisions may help solve the mystery behind peanut-shaped comets like 67P.

For the first time, helium has been spotted in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. A new method of probing these atmospheres may make it easier to study more worlds.

Alien civilizations with technology levels similar to that of Earth could be visible with current instruments, if they've hoisted enough satellites into orbit, a new study suggests.

A collision between Mars and a large asteroid may have created the planet's two moons, Phobos and Deimos.

The names of explorers and the authors of journeys make up some of the first feature names for Charon.

The slow death of a ring may have built up the distinctive ridges on Saturn's walnut-shaped moon.

Hazes baked in a lab may help researchers to understand the atmosphere of exoplanets.

Researchers may have finally found the ghostly footprint of Jupiter's moon Callisto in the planet's auroras.

Fast and furious cosmic flashes leave scientists flummoxed.

A ghostly galaxy has almost no dark matter.