Galaxies

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   

 

Recently discovered galaxies shaped like jellyfish leave a long trail of hot gas and dust, victims of even hotter gas from their surrounding cluster of galaxies

 

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!

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
 

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

Five remarkable stars on the other side of our galaxy promise new insight into the outer reaches of our home turf

A failed dwarf galaxy called the Smith Cloud apparently survived an ancient collision with the Milky Way because of a protective dark matter cloak. Clara Moskowitz reports   

 

Last year I got talking to theoretical physicist Aron Wall about the thermodynamics of quantum gravity. Now that's a deceptively beautiful phrase: in four words, you get three of the deepest areas in modern science.

One of the most fundamental but elusive constituents of the cosmos could soon be cornered
 

The detection of a runaway star may explain how a massive object turned into a dense, magnetic magnetar instead of collapsing into a black hole