Cosmology

Recommendations from Scientific American

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   

 

The astronomers who announced earlier this year evidence of a signal from the dawn of time now are taking a more cautious stance

The Hubble space telescope could increase the chances of success for the New Horizons mission, which is currently nine tenths of the way to Pluto

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!

A few months ago I went to Cambridge, Mass. to check in with the Event Horizon Telescope crew and found Shep Doeleman, the project leader, fresh off the completion of a major purchase.

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