China’s Chang’e 6 probe returned to Earth with rock and soil samples from the little-explored far side of the moon, in a global first. The probe landed in the Inner Mongolian …
If or when SLAC’s planned project, the Light Dark Matter Experiment (LDMX), receives funding—a decision from the Department of Energy is expected in the next year or so—it will scan …
The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Our sun is the best-observed star in the entire universe. We see its light every day. For centuries, scientists have …
Beyond DESI, a slew of new instruments are coming online in the coming years, including the 8.4-meter Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile, NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and the …
The supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the Milky Way, but a newly spotted object takes the crown for the most …
“Where did all this come from? How did it all get started?” These are the questions that Dr. Nergis Mavalvala asks about the universe. It’s not the meaning-of-life stuff in …
-copy.jpg "Starquakes Might Solve the Mysteries of Stellar Magnetism")
That was a surprise—and a possible indication that something crucial was missing in those models: magnetism. Stellar Symmetry Last year, Gang Li, an asteroseismologist now at KU Leuven, went digging …
Scientists leading the European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope mission have just released its breathtaking first science images, taken only four months after launch. These new space photos reveal spectacular …
Like any object, black holes take time to grow and form. And like a 6-foot-tall toddler, Fan’s supersize black holes were too big for their age—the universe wasn’t old enough …
.jpg "A Pair of Sun Probes Just Got Closer to Solving a Solar Enigma")
The blazing surface of the sun froths with an extremely hot electrically charged gas called plasma. The temperature at the edge of this cosmic furnace runs at about 5,500 degrees …