Astrophysics

This brave little craft will face blinding temperatures near the sun.

NASA Hopes to "Touch the Sun" With a Newly Named Probe

The craft will travel within 4 million miles of the sun's surface

Magnetic field strength throughout the Milky Way in present day

Supercomputers Create Breathtaking Simulations of Spiral Galaxies

The simulations took months of modeling to complete—and the results can help scientists learn about the formation of galaxies

An artists rendering of how a solar sail might be powered by a radio beam from the surface of a planet

Are Fast Radio Bursts from Alien Spacecraft? It's Unlikely, but Possible

A new paper raises the (distant) possibility that the unusual high-energy bursts from the cosmos are from intergalactic ships

An infrared image of 47 Tucanae, a dense globular cluster of stars located roughly 16,000 light years from Earth. A new study has predicted that a black hole lies at its center.

How Astrophysicists Found a Black Hole Where No One Else Could

A new method could help scientists peer inside universe's densest star clusters to find undiscovered black holes

The bow-shaped wave on Venus

Scientists Spot Massive Wave in Venus' Atmosphere

The 6,200-mile long bow-shaped wrinkle may have been caused by gravity waves

Artists rendering of all the telescopes that helped track down FRB 121102

Mysterious Fast Radio Bursts Traced to Dwarf Galaxy in the Auriga Constellation

Knowing where they originate will help researchers understand what creates the mysterious high-energy signals

At the top of Dome A, an unmanned research station, is a smattering of antenna masts, small shipping containers, scientific equipment and a lot of footprints that take years for the snow and meager wind to cover up.

The Coldest, Driest, Most Remote Place on Earth Is the Best Place to Build a Radio Telescope

This remote Antarctic field station is an ice-covered arid desert, perfect for peering deep into space

Was the Speed of Light Even Faster in the Early Universe?

Physicists propose a way to test if light exceeded Einstein's constant just after the Big Bang

LIGO's founding fathers, from left: Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish. Not pictured: Ronald Drever

Meet the Team of Scientists Who Discovered Gravitational Waves

This year, the geniuses behind LIGO announced that they had finally found what Albert Einstein had predicted a century ago

Sylvester James Gates, a theoretical physicist and voice for faith and science.

Why Theoretical Physicist Sylvester James Gates Sees No Conflict Between Science and Religion

“I got used to the idea that questions had answers.”

Region R18 in the Carina Nebula

Stunning Images Capture the Carina Nebula's "Pillars of Destruction"

Caught by ESO's Very Large Telescope, the ten pillars of gas and dust are a hazy star nursery 7,500 light years away

Mario Livio

Astrophysicist Mario Livio on the Intersection of Art and Science

The scientist considers both a response to the vastness of the universe

An artist's impression of the Milky Way six million years ago, depicts an orange bubble at the galactic center and extending to a radius of about 20,000 light-years. Scientist think that outside of that bubble, a pervasive "fog" of million-degree gas might account for the galaxy's missing matter.

Solving the Mystery of the Milky Way’s Missing Mass

Smithsonian scientists have discovered a huge cloud of super hot gas expanding from the middle of our galaxy

Soon Everyone Will Be Able to Read NASA-Funded Research

Get ready for a lot more space science

Grab your sunglasses—all of those far-off stars, black holes and celestial bodies contribute to your killer tan.

Part of Your Suntan Comes From Photons That Are Billions of Years Old

Thank bodies from beyond the galaxy for a bit of that golden glow

An image of a nebula used in "The Hubble Cantata."

The Cosmos Sings in This Fusion of Astrophysics and Music

<i>The Hubble Cantata</i> brings the stars down to earth

This spectacular image of the Orion Nebula star-formation region was obtained from multiple exposures using the HAWK-I infrared camera on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.

Breathtaking New Images Capture Failed Stars and Planet-Sized Objects Inside the Orion Nebula

It’s the deepest look into the nebula ever seen before

An artist's rendition of merging black holes that produce gravitational waves.

Gravitational Waves Strike Twice

Scientists announce the second detection of gravitational waves

In this artist's conception, a carbon planet orbits a sunlike star in the early universe.

Diamond Planets Might Have Hosted Earliest Life

A new study pushes back the earliest date that extraterrestrial life might, maybe, could appear; if so, it'd be on planets made of diamond

An artist’s conception of the LISA Pathfinder spacecraft in orbit at Lagrange Point 1.

A Spacecraft Just Measured Movement Less Than the Width of an Atom

The successful results pave the way for a future mission that could detect low-frequency gravity waves

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