Paul Sutter

Toxic hydrogen cyanide gas, used in chemical weapons today, may have been involved in the early stages of life's evolution, a new study suggests.

Astronomers have proposed lots of ideas to explain 'Oumuamua's odd characteristics, and we're unlikely ever to find out which one is correct.

Knowing if high-energy neutrinos and FRBs came from the same place on the sky would help explain the origins of both. But alas, they do not.

Does the simulation hypothesis offer a compelling argument, or is it just interesting food for thought? Let's find out.

How common are ice-covered planets like Hoth from "Star Wars," and might they be capable of hosting life? As usual, the answer is, it depends.

The Pacific Ocean Neutrino Experiment would turn a massive swath of the Pacific Ocean into nature's own neutrino detector.

Hiding beneath the outer layers of some planets, there may be something spectacular: a constant rain of diamonds.

The recently launched James Webb Telescope should help determine if dark matter is made up of primordial black holes.

Now that the telescope is in space, what's next for astrophysics done from beyond Earth's surface? Here are five future missions to get excited about.

A multiverse may be a natural prediction of the physical theories that define the beginning of the universe.

Humans have scanned and searched the heavens for signs of other advanced civilizations in the universe. And we've found nothing. Absolutely nothing. Maybe we shouldn't focus on intelligent life.

The world could end not with a bang, but with a quantum vacuum decay of the ground state of the universe to its true minimum.

How do you test theories of the universe? By building gigantic supercomputers and simulating the evolution of the cosmos.

Wormholes may be stable after all, a new theory suggests, contradicting previous predictions that these hypothetical shortcuts through space-time would instantly collapse.

In a recent study, researchers determined that about 1% of all the "normal" (that is, not dark) matter in the universe is bound up inside black holes.

Since 2014, there have been over 300 proposals for solutions to the "crisis in cosmology." None of these proposals is universally agreed upon by cosmologists, and the crisis just keeps getting worse.

The elements around some giant black holes may be subtly different from the cosmic average, retaining a relic memory of the young universe.

The detection of interstellar objects in the solar system has raised an interesting question: How much of the solar system is made of foreign material?

If scientists want astronomy to thrive throughout the 21st century, we need a new approach: to view new observatories through a lens of public benefit.

Global satellite-based high-speed internet access will come at a cost, polluting the skies and contaminating astronomical observations.

James Clerk Maxwell is the scientist responsible for explaining the forces behind the radio in your car, the magnets on your fridge, the heat of a warm summer day and the charge on a battery.

The universe is pretty good at smashing things together. And when neutron stars do it, the collisions release a flood of elements necessary for life.