Astrophysics

Newly discovered lobes stretch tens of thousands of light-years above and below the Milky Way's disk. Where they come from remains a mystery

Over the coming month the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosetta mission will fire its main engines no less than eight times to tweak its interplanetary intercept course with Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko; eventually sidling up to the 4 kilometer wide cometary nucleus at about 7.9 meters per second in early August.

The smallest galaxies in the universe gave rise to an unexpectedly large proportion of stars. Karen Hopkin reports 

 

The European Southern Observatory broke ground June 19th to build the world's largest telescope atop the Cerro Armazones mountain in Chile. Clara Moskowitz reports   

 

Thinking of space and time as a liquid might help reconcile quantum mechanics and relativity
 

Recently discovered galaxies shaped like jellyfish leave a long trail of hot gas and dust, victims of even hotter gas from their surrounding cluster of galaxies

 

Despite myriad problems in many countries, pockets of excellence thrive in Chile, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina

In 2012, I asked LeVar Burton (who comandeered the Scientific American website as guest editor on Wednesday) if he would join me on a trip across time and space, to another star.

I have a prediction. There is a scientific hypothesis, formulated over 20 years ago, that we will one day look back on, when the evidence is in, and say “Of course that was right!

Small differences in oxygen-isotope ratios have been used to support the big-smash theory

The release of a long-awaited National Academy of Sciences report on the state and future of the US space program has triggered wide-reaching commentary on what it means to be space-faring.