The SphereX (Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer) mission, slated for launch on February 28. 2025, is designed to map out hundreds of millions of galaxies over the entire sky in an attempt...
This selection of the Andromeda galaxy comes courtesy of the largest photomosaic ever assembled with Hubble Space Telescope data. There’s an enormous wealth of astronomical data found within the image: far more than is readily visible to the human eye....
The full-field image of MACS J0717.5+3745 shows many thousands of galaxies in four separate sub-clusters within the large cluster. The blue contours show the inferred mass distribution from the gravitational lensing effects on background objects. Not shown in this diagram...
In February of 2025, noted anti-vaccine, anti-fluoride, and anti-GMO crusader Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., despite the objection of qualified scientists and medical professionals, was sworn in as the director of Health and Human Services in the United States. (Credit: Associated...
If a massive asteroid, similar in size to 2024 YR4 or the body that created the Tunguska Event, were to stream through our atmosphere and collide with our planet, it could potentially level an entire city, causing trillions of dollars...
This illustration shows a star, an orbiting exoplanet, and a cloud (or tail) of debris that emanates off of the exoplanet and obscures a fraction of the parent star’s light. At close enough distances and hot enough temperatures, it won’t...
Prior to the pioneering 2025 work that discovered the Bullseye galaxy, showcased here, no galaxy had more than three concentric rings ever discovered within it. The Bullseye galaxy has at least 9, and potentially more that have faded away, due...
Here in our own Solar System, we have at least three notable large, terrestrial-sized bodies with impressive lunar systems of their own: the Earth-Moon system, the Mars-Phobos-Deimos system, and the Plutonian planetary system. Pluto, interestingly, is orbited by Charon, which...
Intelligent aliens, if they exist in the galaxy or the Universe, might be detectable from a variety of signals: electromagnetic, from planet modification, or because they’re spacefaring. But we haven’t found any evidence for an inhabited alien planet so far....
From macroscopic scales down to subatomic ones, the sizes of the fundamental particles play only a small role in determining the sizes of composite structures. Whether the building blocks are truly fundamental and/or point-like particles is still not known, but...
