
Has An Exomoon Been Found?
Intriguing data from an event in 2007 hints at an exomoon forming around a giant planet in a youthful star system 420 light years from Earth.

Has An Exomoon Been Found?
Intriguing data from an event in 2007 hints at an exomoon forming around a giant planet in a youthful star system 420 light years from Earth.

Astrobiologist Aims to Make Science Education More Interactive
I remember battling sleepiness as I slouched in a large lecture hall, squinting to make out the writing on the blackboard during my freshman introductory physics course in college.


What Rabbits and Martian Rovers Taught Me About Scale
Quite often when I am looking at photos, I just feel like something is missing. It is not a criticism of the light or the composition, but rather that something is, quite literally, missing: a scale.

Lost And Found On Mars
Lost, presumed crashed, the Beagle-2 lander is finally located on Mars. Back in December 2003 a bold and decidedly British robotic device was released from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Mars Express orbiter.

Will We Find Extraterrestrial Life In 2015?
Probably not, but just possibly yes. One of the reasons that the search for life elsewhere in the universe is so exciting is that it would take only one chance discovery, one lucky break, for all the walls to come tumbling down.

The Top Ten Space and Physics Stories of 2014
From humanity’s first, flawed foray to the surface of a comet to the celebrated discovery of (and less celebrated skepticism about) primordial gravitational waves, 2014 has brought some historic successes and failures in space science and physics.

Mars, Ancient Water, Deep Hydrogen, and Life
Two billion year-old water pockets and a revised deep hydrogen content are good news for Earth’s vast subsurface biosphere, and could offer clues to life on Mars and much further beyond.

NASA Rover Finds Mysterious Methane Emissions on Mars
New results suggest evidence for extraterrestrial life could be near at hand

Big Mirrors, High Hopes: Extremely Large Telescope Is A Go
In astronomy, bigger is almost always better. The size of a telescope’s aperture (or primary optical element) not only determines how many pesky little photons it can capture, but also the ultimate resolution of the image that can be formed.

Quasars, Black Holes and the Origins of Intercontinental Radio Astronomy
Not long ago I came across a piece in the Scientific American archives from the earliest days of very-long baseline radio interferometry, the technique employed by the Event Horizon Telescope.

Launch of Orion Paves the Way for NASA’s Return to Human Spaceflight
The first human-rated U.S. spacecraft since the space shuttle took an unmanned trial run on Friday

Physicist Slams Cosmic Theory He Helped Conceive
I love apostates, believers in or, better yet, conceivers of a theory who turn against it. They restore my faith in science, because they show that scientists can overcome attachment to their own brainchildren, a feat that is essential for progress and cannot be taken for granted.