Cosmology

A new analysis suggests lightning and volcanoes helped make life possible. David Biello reports

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider has produced several nuclei of the antimatter counterpart to helium 4

Bid to join gravitational-wave detector network hinges on government cash.

Is there a theory of everything? If so, is it possible to verify via experimentation? These and other questions energized a panel of physicists and their audience at this year's Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate at the American Museum of Natural History

Astronomy buffs know that the European Southern Observatory (ESO), a conglomerate of 15 European countries that operates three observing sites in Chile, is a font of awesome space images .

Physicist Thomas LeCompte explains how the Large Hadron Collider's output will differ from the big bang--and what they have in common. Steve Mirsky reports

An online-only addition to the March 2011 Graphic Science column

A Parisian astronomer tells how he became the unofficial record keeper of exoplanets and when we'll stop discovering new ones

Short-lived fountains of plasma may explain why the sun's outer atmosphere is hotter than its surface

What we don't know could hurt us

Mercury has never been orbited by a spacecraft before. That will change this month