Largest canyon in the solar system revealed in stunning new images By Brandon Specktor Mars' Valles Marineris is nearly 10 times as long as the Grand Canyon and three times as deep, but nobody knows how it formed.
Are primordial black holes really giant gravitinos? By Paul Sutter New research proposes that the first black holes came from clumps of gravitinos, exotic, hypothetical particles that managed to survive the first chaotic years of the Big Bang.
Defending Earth against dangerous asteroids: Q&A with NASA's Lindley Johnson By Leonard David Space.com caught up with NASA Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson to discuss recent events and what's on the planetary-defense agenda in the coming year.
Congress asks for report on Arecibo radio telescope collapse By Doris Elin Urrutia Congress wants a report investigating the December collapse of the iconic radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory by late February.
New law is first to protect Apollo sites from future moon missions By Robert Z. Pearlman Protecting and preserving the historic sites where the Apollo astronauts first landed on the moon is now not only a good idea, it is also the law.
Planetary protection needs more than just NASA, White House plan says By Meghan Bartels The White House has laid out a plan for overhauling the federal government's planetary-protection rules, which work to prevent contamination between Earth and other potentially habitable worlds.
Did a holographic phase transition in the early universe release gravitational waves? By Paul Sutter A team of physicists recently used a string-theory technique to reveal that we're on the cusp of detecting phase transitions in the early universe through their gravitational wave signature.
Earth's atmosphere is full of microbes. Could they help us find life on other worlds? By Meghan Bartels If you're feeling lonely, take solace in remembering that there are countless tiny living things floating tens of thousands of feet above your head.
Is there more than one dark energy? By Paul Sutter What if there is more than one cosmological agent for dark energy? This mixture would have strange effects in our universe, making it potentially detectable with upcoming surveys.
Did the Milky Way's huge black hole kill all the red giants around it? By Paul Sutter A massive jet launched from our galaxy's supermassive black hole may have destroyed any red giant stars that wandered into its path, a new study suggests.
What is a star? By Paul Sutter It's easy enough to say what a star is: one of those bright pointy things that twinkle in the night sky. But the actual definition of a star is as rich and colorful as the stars themselves.
Could we ever pull enough carbon out of the atmosphere to stop climate change? By Donavyn Coffey Can we harness natural and human-made carbon traps to help us slow climate change?
Bad space weather may make life impossible near Proxima Centauri By Andrew Zic, Tara Murphy If you look up in the southern sky you can see the “pointer” stars, pointing towards the Southern Cross.
This is what a supernova sounds like, according to NASA By Brandon Specktor NASA's new data sonification project turns the universe's most extreme phenomena into sounds.
The Milky Way is probably full of dead civilizations By Rafi Letzter If there are other intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way, they are probably much closer than we are to the galactic center, and fairly young.
Our galaxy's supermassive black hole is closer to Earth than we thought By Diane Lincoln The supermassive black hole hiding in the center of our galaxy is much closer to Earth, about 2,000 light-years closer, than scientists thought.
A giant black hole keeps evading detection and scientists can't explain it By Mike Wall The big galaxy at the core of the cluster Abell 2261 should harbor a supermassive black hole that weighs as much as 3 billion to 100 billion suns. But astronomers can't find it.
'Zombie' greenhouse gas lurks in permafrost beneath the Arctic Ocean By Nicoletta Lanese Experts say we need to improve our patchy knowledge of subsea permafrost.
Jupiter and Saturn descend on world's tallest building in epic 'Great Conjunction' video By Brandon Specktor A photographer filmed the "Great Conjunction" of Jupiter and Saturn as the heavenly bodies passed by Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building.
