The central idea of String Theory is that all the quanta we know of are described by tiny strings that vibrate in various ways on minuscule scales: far below what’s ever been probed. String theory is an attempt at a...
This Wolf–Rayet star is known as WR 31a, located about 30,000 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. The outer nebula is expelled hydrogen and helium, while the central star, likely fusing carbon-or-heavier elements in its core, burns at over...
This map of the galaxy Messier 81, constructed from data taken with the Very Large Array, maps out this spiral-armed, star-forming galaxy in 21 centimeter emissions. The spin-flip transition of hydrogen, which emits light at precisely 21 centimeters in wavelength,...
The lab leak conspiracy theory, promoted here in 2021 by Sen. Rand Paul, vilifies Dr. Fauci and attempts to tie him to the notion that the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 was engineered in and leaked from the Wuhan Institute for Virology....
While there are a great number of exoplanets out there that may house life, including exoplanets that are very different from Earth, we must be careful to distinguish possible biosignature molecules from abiotically produced ones, and be aware that many...
A black hole, even in radio wavelengths alone, will exhibit a large number of different features owing to the bending of light by the curved space surrounding the black hole. Some of the material from behind the black hole, some...
This illustration shows a human colony within a dome on an otherwise uninhabited planet. Humans have often dreamed of colonizing other worlds: both within our Solar System and beyond.(Credit: Corepics VOF/Shutterstock)In all the known Universe, Earth is the only planet...
In a vacuum decay scenario, our Universe exists in a false minimum state, and it’s possible to arrive, either through quantum tunneling or an energetic kick that causes us to leave that state, to enter a true (or truer) vacuum...
In July of 1969, humanity took our first steps on the surface of another world: the Moon. This was the crowning achievement of NASA and the space program in the 1960s, representing a global victory for science and human achievement....
During cosmological inflation, the space contained in the inflationary region grows exponentially, doubling in all three dimensions with each tiny fraction-of-a-second that passes. Where inflation ends, a hot Big Bang ensues. But due to quantum effects, each region where a...
