Neutrinos are one of the most enigmatic particles in the standard model. The main reason is that they’re so hard to detect. Despite the fact that 400 trillion of them created in the Sun are passing through a person’s body every second, they rarely interact with normal matter, making understanding anything about them difficult. To … Read more
On July 1st, 2025, astronomers at NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ALERT) detected the third interstellar object (ISO) to enter our Solar System – 3I/ATLAS. Shortly thereafter, an international team led by researchers from Michigan State University (MSU) published the first scientific paper detailing the early scientific findings on this ISO. Hundreds of hours of observations have … Read more
Science is a story of coming up with theories then doing our best to disprove them. That is especially true for theories on a grand, cosmological scale, though disproving them can be particularly hard. One of the most famous examples of a hard to disprove theory is that of dark energy and dark matter. In … Read more
Deep in space, an ancient brown dwarf nicknamed “The Accident” has revealed the first-ever detection of a molecule that scientists have been searching for in planetary atmospheres for decades. This discovery not only explains why silicon remains hidden in Jupiter and Saturn’s atmospheres, but also opens a window into how the chemistry of our universe … Read more
Stellar black holes form from the collapse of massive stars at the end of their lives, typically weighing 3 to 50 times the mass of the Sun. When a star runs out of fuel, it explodes in a supernova, leaving behind a region so dense that nothing can escape, not even light. Primordial black holes, … Read more
Europe’s upcoming Mars rover mission has received an unexpected boost in its search for signs of ancient life. The Rosalind Franklin rover, scheduled to launch in 2028, will land in Oxia Planum, a vast clay rich plain that formed in water billions of years ago. Two new studies have revealed that natural Martian processes could … Read more
Different parts of Mars have different advantages and disadvantages when it comes to their available resources, just like Earth. The polar caps are likely the most valuable in terms of their water content, which will be critical to any early stage crewed mission to the Red Planet. But to really unlock the fully potential of … Read more
Artist’s impression of a black hole star (not to scale). The cut-out reveals the central black hole with it surrounding accretion disk. What makes this a black hole star is the surrounding envelope of turbulent gas. This configuration can explain what astronomers observe in the object they are calling “The Cliff.” (Credit : MPIA/HdA/T. Müller/A. … Read more
According to every experiment, the constants of nature appear to be constant. And this creates a really sticky, nasty, ugly problem for us: it looks like the constants are fine-tuned. As in, if they had any other value, we’d be dead. Actually, less than dead, which is probably worse. Non-existent. Impossible to be here. Check … Read more
While plate tectonics may not be absolutely necessary for life, they may be necessary for a technological civilization to arise. Habitability may be possible on a static world, but habitability probably won’t persist long enough for a technological civilization like ours to appear. Plate tectonics regulates our planet’s climate, and without it, atmospheric CO2 would … Read more