Paul Sutter

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.

The formation of the solar system is a challenging puzzle for modern astronomy and a terrific tale of extreme forces operating over immense timescales. Let's dig in.

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.

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.

Physicists sifting through old particle accelerator data have found evidence of a highly-elusive, never-before-seen process: a so-called triangle singularity.

A new theory suggests dark matter may have come from quantum bags that got squished together in the early universe.

What are the chances that a primordial black hole forged in the earliest moments of the universe will come wandering toward Earth?

Certain weird gravity conditions would make it possible to travel through a wormhole and back.

Asteroids are packed with gold and other valuable resources. And the best way to harvest those metals may be to bring space rocks to Earth.

If we ever want to take pictures of an Earth-like exoplanet, we need to think bigger than the biggest telescopes on Earth.

On Aug. 4, 2008, the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope began full science operations, scanning the entire sky through the highest-energy form of light.

The growing problem of space junk poses a risk to future space missions, but the solution isn't going to be easy.