The Hunt for Life in Alpha Centauri
This oddball system of three stars might be our best chance at finding nearby life in the Universe.
To Find a New World, Watch How a Planet Dances with Its Star
Finding a tiny planet around bright stars dozens or hundreds of light-years from Earth is extremely difficult.
How Mars Lost Its Magnetic Field—and Then Its Oceans
Chemical changes inside Mars's core caused it to lose its magnetic field. This, in turn, caused it to lose its oceans. But how?
Athanasius Kircher’s “Musical Ark”
The first algorithmically generated music came to us in the seventeenth century, courtesy of Kircher and his Arca musarithmica.
How Plate Tectonics Shook Life into Existence
The cycles of life all rely on the dynamism of the Earth’s crust.
“Ghostly” Neutrinos Help Us See Our Milky Way as Never Before
As Marcel Proust said, “The real voyage of discovery...consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
Cape Town, South Africa
Although the apartheid era continues to cast its shadow on Cape Town, many of its neighborhoods have been enjoying a renaissance as tourist destinations.
We Might Have Accidentally Killed the Only Life We Ever Found on Mars Nearly 50 Years Ago
In one experiment, the Viking landers added water to Martian soil samples. That might have been a very bad idea.
Is Star Trek’s Warp Drive Possible?
The concept of the warp drive is currently at odds with everything we know to be true about physics.
Solved: Astronomers Identify Origin of Mysterious Flares in Galaxy OJ 287
In a distant galaxy, a cosmic dance between two supermassive black holes emits periodic flashes of light.