
Plumes Spotted on Europa Suggest Easy Access to Water
Water vapor erupting from this Jovian moon could offer new pathways for exploring its subsurface ocean
Lee Billings is a senior editor for space and physics at Scientific American. Credit: Nick Higgins
Water vapor erupting from this Jovian moon could offer new pathways for exploring its subsurface ocean
Take a light-speed trip through the solar system to catch up on 2016’s biggest stories from our celestial neighborhood. Produced with support from Explore Scientific
The new administration will likely shift NASA resources away from Earth exploration and into deep space. But many questions remain about how the agency will be led and funded
The President-elect’s space policy platform calls for disruptive reorganizations and possible budget cuts to Earth-observing satellite programs
New studies suggest the dwarf planet’s spin is tilted askew, perhaps by the presence of a subsurface sea
European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli spacecraft crashed and possibly exploded
The Schiaparelli lander’s failure to phone home has scientists fearing the worst
With the Schiaparelli lander, Europe hopes to join the U.S. and Russia in successfully touching down on the Red Planet
A privately funded small space telescope could soon seek Earth-like planets around the sun’s nearest neighboring stars
If there is life on the Red Planet—even just alien microbes clinging to existence in isolated refuges—any biological contamination we import from Earth could cause an ecological and scientific catastrophe...
Recent disappointments have physicists looking beyond WIMPs for dark matter particles
David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz share the 2016 Nobel Prize for work explaining the topological underpinnings of superconductivity and other strange phenomena
Follow the pioneering spacecraft’s final descent to the bizarre surface of the distant space traveler
Astronomers are racing to get the first historic image of another possibly Earth-like planet. Here’s how they’ll do it
A protein from microscopic creatures called tardigrades keeps their DNA protected—and could someday shield humans from radiation.
If confirmed, the icy Jovian moon’s eruptions could offer new pathways for exploring its subsurface ocean
A science fiction novel published in 2013 pegged some of the most salient details for our nearest neighboring exoplanet
Cracks are showing in the dominant explanation for dark matter. Is there anything more plausible to replace it?
A blip of energy picked up by a Russian radio telescope might have been nothing more than a satellite passing overhead—or even a software glitch
Astronomers find an exoplanet that could be habitable—and it’s as close to us as it could possibly be
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