At a meeting of the American Astronomical Society today, a team of astronomers announced that they'd discovered a new planet—a rocky world weighing 17 times the size of Earth that they've dubbed "mega-Earth."
An Orthodox priest conducts a blessing service in front of the Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft at the Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday. The Soyuz is scheduled to launch Thursday. Image via Dmitry Lovetsky/AP.
It is not a question of if a killer asteroid will strike our planet, devastating at the very least a city, and at most the entire race. It is just a question of how soon. The current consensus: it won't be too long now.
NASA's moon-orbiting LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer) spacecraft is expected to make a crash landing on the moon sometime this month, after having explored its thin atmosphere and lunar dust environment since October.
The Soyuz TMA-12M space ship, carrying a new crew to the International Space Station, blasts off at a Russian-leased cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday. Onboard are two Russian cosmonauts and one American astronaut. Image via Dmitry Lovetsky/AP.
Yesterday's announcement that astronomers have detected gravitational waves and confirmed the inflation theory of the Big Bang is a game-changer for astrophysicists everywhere, but no one is more excited than Stanford professor Andrei Linde.
Radio astronomers operating telescopes at the South Pole said Monday that they've discovered evidence that the universe ballooned out of the Big Bang due to a massive gravitational force generated by space itself. The discovery is being called the "smoking gun" for the Big Bang theory, and it could have huge…
An 885-foot-long asteroid will speed by the Earth tonight at 27,000 miles per hour, but what's the tie-in with the Winter Olympics? Well, it was "almost exactly" a year ago when another chunk of space rock actually exploded in the sky over Russia—and that's where Sochi is, in Russia!
When a man looks at his wife and four (!) children, what he really sees is the black iron prison surrounding him. How does he break out? In the case of Utah dad Ken Sullivan, the answer is the same red planet that has inspired humanity throughout history. Mars!
Two astronauts have begun an emergency spacewalk to fix a malfunctioning pump module on the International Space Station, wearing suits that have also malfunctioned recently.
A spacecraft launched by China has landed on the moon, the first "soft landing" a man-made object has made on the moon since 1976.
Crazy universe! Mars life! Sun plasma! Tech toys! Electric powers! Chimp people! Danger gas! And dinosaurs that lived beneath the sea! It's your Wednesday Science Watch, where we watch science—cause it's our prerogative!
Yesterday NASA released this crazy GIF of a storm on Saturn where air streams move at more than 200 miles an hour. It's the only weather system of its kind in our solar system.
Dye worm! Old DNA! Shark stomach! Quantum holes! Alien water! Cat chat! Lib psyche! And d-d-d-d-designer stuff, man! It's your weekly Science Watch, where we watch science— with a certain je nais se kwa!
Asteroid tails! Clean bacteria! Dinosaur gore! See-thru snails! Desert farming! Traffic math! Moon craters! And toothy fish that can't be killed! It's your Thursday Science Watch, where we watch science—with rancor!
If you missed last night's meteor in California, or last winter's exploding asteroid in Russia, you'll probably have another chance soon: Scientists now believe large asteroids, like the one in Russia, could strike Earth far more often than previously studies had indicated.
An enormous fireball (or alien spaceship) reportedly exploded over the skies of California, Nevada and Arizona around 8 p.m. Pacific time, according to hundreds of eyewitness reports on Twitter. While the top picture seems like a normal, awesome photograph of a meteor streaking through the sky, this other completely…
Gravity topped the box office for the third straight weekend as it gained traction with three separate audiences: "adults," "women," and "fanboys." Not as many people saw Carrie because it’s way lame compared to a movie filmed in space.
"Do Black Holes Have 'Hair?'" "The giraffes that sailed to medieval China." "What would happen if you got zapped by the Large Hadron Collider?" Uh, chill out, science. Take a day off.
I still felt Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity in my body the day after I saw it last week.
