All Space Articles

Ready for an exotic vacation? How about…really exotic? Tired of tropical beaches or snow-covered mountains? Let’s go…out of this world.

Excited by the prospects of the “UFO Report”? As a scientist, I have my doubts. But you can watch UFOS DECLASSIFED: LIVE on Discovery and Science June 30 at 8P where experts discuss what can and can't be explained.

First, take a bunch of matter. It doesn’t matter what kind – a piece of paper, some leftover gum. Then, press it, and press it, and press it some more. Don’t stop now! We’ve got a long way to go.

We’ve all seen the movies. Tunnels cut through the red rock. Giant glass domes stretching from one end of a crater rim to another. Hydroponics. Lots and lots of hydroponics. But Mars is… a challenge.

All planets with evidence of life please take a step forward. Not so fast, Venus.

Long ago, our universe was without stars. When that first generation ignited, it completely transformed the cosmos, ripping away the veil of neutral gas that had persisted for hundreds of millions of years. This process, called reionization, is largely mysterious to astronomers. But new research is revealing that the smallest of galaxies may have played the biggest of roles.

Meet TYC 7037-89-1, a six-star solar system. Astrophysicist Paul M. Sutter explains this stellar surprise discovery.

Sometimes when you want to go out, you want to go out with a bang.

You would think that objects weighing billions of times the mass of the sun would be easy to find. Alas, it’s rarely that simple.

According to NASA, "A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. This can happen when a star is dying." But what happens when a black hole dies?

Okay, stars die in all sorts of interesting and cosmically expressive ways (except the red dwarf stars, who just sort of…stop).

Exoplanets are planets orbiting stars outside the solar system, and every month seems to bring in a new batch of weird, wild, and wonderful worlds.

ID2299, a galaxy 13.8 billion light years away, died far too young.

Every star you see in the sky, including the sun, will someday die. It’s best to get used to that idea now, before things start to get heavy.