The Universe

Subatomic black holes from ancient cosmic history could, in principle, make you have a very bad day. But chances are you’ll never encounter one

All the sun’s planets are oddballs. But some are more so than others

NASA plans to launch a wildly ambitious nuclear-powered octocopter to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, in 2028

A single subatomic particle from deep space had the same energy as a baseball pitch, and scientists still don’t know how it got here

Long ago, the cosmos might have been a black hole factory—and these primordial objects are even weirder than you think

Just how big can a star become? The answer depends on when in cosmic history you’re asking the question

Despite years of debate and follow-up studies, an odd streak of cosmic light still defies a final explanation. Is it a giant black hole screaming through intergalactic space?

Satellites are wonders of modern technology that have improved all of our lives. But having more than a million of them in orbit could destroy our view of the heavens and seriously damage our planet

Although astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets, the number of confirmed exomoons—and exorings—is still zero. But that may soon change

How big would a telescope need to be to see Earth’s dinosaurs from 66 million light-years away? Think big—and then think bigger

The collision of supermassive black holes shakes the entire cosmos, hard

You might think galaxies can’t ever find each other in our runaway cosmos, but it turns out gravity can sometimes overcome even the stretching of space itself