MESSENGER’s Mercurial Swan Song and Other Interplanetary Smash-Ups
On April 30, if all goes well, after running out of fuel to fight off orbital decay NASA’s long-running MESSENGER spacecraft will end its mission to Mercury by crashing into the planet’s surface at nearly 4 kilometers per second.
Agony and Ecstasy: Hubble's Top Moments and Near-Death Episodes
Scientists and astronauts recall the telescope’s finest hours as well as threats to its 25-year existence
Building an Earth-Size Telescope, One Station at a Time
Imagine a trio of aerobatic aircraft. Over the years they've gotten very good at their routine. But they want to add another five or six or seven members.
Dark Matter May Feel a “Dark Force” That the Rest of the Universe Does Not
Astronomers watching galaxies collide found evidence of nongravitational forces that could suggest dark matter interacts with itself
Alien Supercivilizations Absent from 100,000 Nearby Galaxies
The most far-seeing search ever performed for “Dyson spheres” and other artifacts of “astroengineering” comes up empty. Where is everybody?
Dark Matter Mapped at Cosmic Scale
A survey has charted clusters and voids of invisible matter over hundreds of millions of light-years
Where Would you Leave a Message From the Stars?
A recent article by Samuel Arbesman in the science magazine Nautilus discusses the extraordinary sounding possibility that – just perhaps – a search for extraterrestrial intelligence could be made by looking at our DNA.
Neutron Stars Serve Up Plates of Nuclear Pasta
Along with black holes, neutron stars are the result of stars collapsing under gravity once their fuel burns out, until their density is about the same as that of the nucleus of an atom, at which point the protons and electrons “melt” into pure neutrons.
New Dark Matter Map Confirms Current Theories
The American Physical Society is holding its annual April Meeting at the moment in Baltimore, Maryland, and one of the highlights, research-wise, comes to us courtesy of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration.
Was I Wrong about “The End of Science”?
One of the coolest—and most stressful–moments of my career took place November 7, 1996, when I was a staff writer for Scientific American.
NASA Assures Skeptical Congress That the James Webb Telescope Is on Track
The program will not repeat past mistakes, officials vow, and will launch as planned in 2018
After a Martian Marathon, NASA's Opportunity Rover Faces Uncertain Future
It's been a long time coming, but this week NASA's Mars Opportunity rover completed the first-ever Martian marathon. After landing on the Red Planet in January 2004 on a mission originally planned to only last 90 days, Opportunity has instead endured for more than a decade, and has taken eleven years and two months to [...]