Giant Telescope in Chile Could Be Named for Pioneering Astronomer Vera Rubin By Elizabeth Howell Astronomer Vera Rubin — best known for her pioneering research about dark matter — will lend her name to a new telescope if a bipartisan bill becomes law.
The Ocean on Jupiter's Moon Europa Has Table Salt, Just Like Earth's Seas By Mike Wall The huge ocean sloshing beneath the ice shell of the Jupiter moon Europa may be more similar to the seas of Earth than scientists had thought.
Astronomers Measure Tiny Black Hole in Nearby Dwarf Galaxy By Passant Rabie A small black hole in a nearby dwarf galaxy is 40 times smaller than previously thought.
Supernovas May Seed the Universe with More Stardust Than Predicted By Passant Rabie A new study reveals a population of stardust that originated from supernovas.
Vera Rubin: The Astronomer Who Brought Dark Matter to Light By Tim Childers Vera Rubin's discoveries showed that our universe is much more mysterious than anyone imagined.
Stephen Hawking Was Right: Black Holes Can Evaporate, Weird New Study Shows By Meredith Fore In 1974, Stephen Hawking made one of his most famous predictions: that black holes eventually evaporate entirely.
An Explosive Volcano on Mars May Have Spawned This Strange Rock Billions of Years Ago By Meghan Bartels Next year, NASA will launch a new Mars rover, one that is equipped to determine whether the Red Planet ever hosted life — but the craft could also determine how violently Martian volcanoes erupted.
Here's How Colossal Galaxy Clusters Reveal Dark Matter Secrets By Paul Sutter Clusters of galaxies hold the prestigious title of "largest gravitationally bound structures in the universe," which is no small feat.
Our Aging Sun Is Still Capable of Unleashing 'Superflares.' Should We Worry? By Elizabeth Howell The mature sun may still be prone to temper tantrums. A new study suggests that older stars like the sun can produce superflares — huge bursts of energy visible across hundreds of light-years.
This Gorgeous Spiral Galaxy Photo May Hold Clues About Our Milky Way's Inner Workings By Elizabeth Howell A beautiful new Hubble Space Telescope image of a barred spiral galaxy shows a scene similar to what outside observers might see when they look at our own Milky Way.
The Search for Habitable Alien Worlds in Earth's Backyard Heats Up By Mike Wall The NEAR instrument has been hunting for planets in the Alpha Centauri system.
Weird 'Anomaly' at the Moon's South Pole May Be a Metal Asteroid's Grave By Meghan Bartels There's something very weird, and very dense, under the surface of the moon's South Pole-Aitken basin, new research suggests.
Rare Meteorites on Earth Forged in Massive Crash on Asteroid Vesta By Charles Q. Choi Mysterious rare meteorites made of a mix of stone and iron likely formed when Vesta, the brightest asteroid in the sky, experienced a giant impact, a new study finds.
This Asteroid Has a 1-in-7,000 Chance of Hitting Earth This Fall By Laura Geggel This fall, Earth has about a 1-in-7,000 chance of getting an uninvited extraterrestrial visitor: asteroid 2006 QV89.
Biggest Meteorite Impact in the UK Found Buried in Water and Rock By Passant Rabie The site of the biggest meteorite collision in the U.K. was discovered in Scotland.
Here's Where Commercial Landers Will Land on the Moon for NASA By Meghan Bartels NASA has chosen the first companies that will ferry its instruments to the moon as part of the Artemis program — and with those selections come hints of where the contracted landers will touch down.
Godzilla Grew 30 Times Faster Than Any Organism on Earth. Here's Why. By Laura Geggel If Godzilla were a real creature, his incredibly rapid growth spurt on the big screen would be off the charts, even setting evolutionary records, a new report finds.
Einstein's Quest to 'Know God's Thoughts' Could Take Millennia By Don Lincoln Unifying all the forces and particles would require a particle accelerator far more powerful than humans have ever built.
Physicists Search for Monstrous Higgs Particle. It Could Seal the Fate of the Universe. By Paul Sutter Without the Higgs, the Standard Model of particle physics comes crashing down.
