Expert Voices

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.

New research has road-tested a way to spot some of the most voracious black holes of all, making it easier to find them buried deep in the hearts of distant galaxies.

If all goes according to plan, the James Webb Space Telescope, launched on Christmas Day 2021 after years of delays, will usher in a new era of astronomy.

The Standard Model explains the physics of how the world works. But in 2021, physicists started probing fundamental gaps in this long-established concept.

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

Lots of us are familiar with pictures of the planet Saturn and its unmistakable ring.

A NASA spacecraft the size of a golf cart has been directed to smash into an asteroid, with the intention of knocking it slightly off course.

The heat inside planets is left over from when they were formed.

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.

The satellite exploded into more than 3,500 pieces of debris, most of which are still orbiting.

Making a Red Planet simulation as realistic as possible is key to The Mars Society's research. Crews can accomplish this, but not with constant outside interference.

Is there intelligent life elsewhere in the universe?

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?