IntroductionTo harbor life, at least as we know it, a planet must orbit a star that is relatively calm and stable. The planet’s orbit...

IntroductionEarth’s fate rests on a coin flip. In 5 billion years, our sun will balloon into a red giant star. Whether Earth survives is an...

Lunar exploration is undergoing a renaissance. Dozens of missions, organized by multiple space agencies—and increasingly by commercial companies—are set to visit the moon by...

A rare system of six exoplanets, all smaller than Neptune but larger than Earth, has...

Astronomers get to ask some of the most fundamental questions there are, ranging from whether we’re alone in the cosmos to what the nature...

The guilty verdict in the criminal trial of Sam Bankman-Fried—delivered by a jury shortly before 8 p.m. ET in New York—triggered a torrent of...

Victoria Grinberg, who is the first “liaison scientist” at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands, talks to Hamish Johnston about...

My college laptop was slow. It didn’t help that the internet was too. Neither fact distracted me from two crucial tasks: downloading music and...

IntroductionThe tools of artificial intelligence — neural networks in particular — have been good to physicists. For years, this technology has helped researchers reconstruct...

Clár-Bríd Tohill reviews Under Alien Skies: a Sightseer’s Guide to the Universe by Philip Plait As an astronomer, I...

IntroductionOur planet is doomed. In a few billion years, the sun will exhaust its hydrogen fuel and swell into a red giant — a star so...

IntroductionFor decades, astronomers have been perplexed by planetary magnetic fields. In our own solar system, there is no rule that explains which worlds generate...