Cosmology

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

The release of a long-awaited National Academy of Sciences report on the state and future of the US space program has triggered wide-reaching commentary on what it means to be space-faring.

New observations of a behemoth collision reveal extreme physical forces at work
 

A prestigious panel of scientists recommends sending humans to the Red Planet as the space agency's wisest long-range goal

Two analyses suggest that the signal of big bang ripples announced earlier this year was too weak to be significant

In a Q&A biographer Lynn Sherr explains the public and personal sides of the notoriously private Sally Ride, America’s first woman in space, which she chronicles in a new book

Cosmic inflation, nano-optics, memory and cognition are among the topics to earn recognition

Astrophysicist Ray Jayawardhana, of the University of Toronto, talks about his new book Neutrino Hunters: The Thrilling Chase for a Ghostly Particle to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe