Stories by John Matson

The mammoth infrared observatory, scheduled to launch in 2014, will look back to the first stars in the universe

Electrons not only have charge, they also have spin--and electric insulators are not opaque to the latter property

Earth's churning interior produced a protective magnetic field as early as 3.45 billion years ago, closer to when life began

Potassium atoms interspersed into crystals of the organic compound picene yields superconductivity at relatively high temperatures

A test of bacterial survivability points to possible avenues for microbial survival on Mars, assuming life--and specifically Earth-like life--ever developed there

A particle from Comet Wild 2, returned to Earth by the Stardust spacecraft, appears to have led a long and migratory life

Biological nanowires link electrochemical processes more than a centimeter apart

A reservoir of comets deep in the outer reaches of the solar system has so far escaped direct detection

Type Ia supernovae, often used to calibrate cosmological measurements, may arise from merging white dwarfs, after all

A new analysis of the Murchison meteorite, which fell to Earth more than 40 years ago, reveals tens of thousands of organic compounds

Less than a millionth of a degree kelvin above absolute zero, chemical reactions can still proceed rapidly

The rapid formation of stars billions of years ago compared with the present day appears to have resulted from larger gas reservoirs rather than from a more efficient formation process

The Solar Dynamics Observatory will provide heliophysicists with a flood of data about the sun

With just five scheduled launches remaining, the space shuttle program and the construction of the International Space Station are wrapping up apace