The SARS virus (orange) has a crown-like structure, meaning that it’s part of the coronavirus family of diseases. The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, also known as the virus which causes COVID-19 in humans, is the largest, most lethal and long-term detrimental...
From the main mine that humans made in the Oklo region, one of the natural reactors is accessible via an offshoot, as illustrated here. The large uranium deposit present underwent nuclear fission on and off for hundreds of thousands of...
Around galaxy UGC 00180, a great stellar halo consisting of approximately four billion stars’ worth of matter can be discovered by optimizing this telescopic image for low surface-brightness features. It turns out that a great many galaxies, maybe even all...
Many have already claimed that cosmology is in crisis, and that the Big Bang, and our entire ΛCDM paradigm, has unsound foundations. But the consensus picture not only isn’t so easy to overthrow, but the “crisis” aspect is often greatly...
From their earliest beginnings to their final extent before fading away, Sun-like stars will grow from their present size to the size of a red giant (~the Earth’s orbit) to up to ~5 light-years in diameter, typically. The largest known...
Believe it or not, we’ve actually caught a few exoplanets doing exactly this, and we’ve got the JWST spectra in hand for one of them now, teaching us, for the first time, what a planetary interior is made of outside...
These two projections show the primordial sky in microwave light as seen by ESA’s Planck mission. At left, a hemispherical projection (encapsulating half of the sky) is shown; at right, a Mollweide projection (encapsulating the full sky) is shown. (Credit:...
These aren’t a pair of eyes gazing at us from the depths of space, but rather a pair of interacting spiral galaxies that are forming stars at enhanced rates due to their mutual gravitational pulls on one another. This image...
The Milky Way, as seen at La Silla observatory, is a stunning, awe-inspiring sight to anyone, and offers a spectacular view of a great many stars in our galaxy. There are approximately 6000 stars visible to the naked human eye,...
If each time a quantum decision were made, our timeline split to allow for two (and only two) possible outcomes, then the number of overall possibilities would increase incredibly rapidly, depending on which combinations of outcomes and what order-of-interactions are...
