Quantcast
Browsing all 81 articles
Browse latest View live

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

the birth of a supermassive monster, revisited

We know that black holes can grow to become absolutely enormous in size, tipping the scales at billions and billions of times the mass of our sun. The numbers involved make the gravitational monsters...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

could a geocentrist even screw in a lightbulb?

You would think that after seeing all the creationists who can’t even pick valid lines of argument, politicians who think that our planet is just 6,000 years old based on arbitrary numerology, modern...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

alien planet has alien chemistry. io9 is shocked.

Could you believe that a far away planet closely orbiting its star would have very different chemistry than what we would expect based on gas giants in our own solar system? Oh you could? And I...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

the search for alien water hits on gliese 581g

So it may be tidally locked and the temperatures around the equator might be hot enough to fry something as the night side is encrusted in ice that never melts, but Gliese 581g is our strongest...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

learning about stars by listening to their hum

Usually, when we think of an explosion, we imagine a violent blast and a very loud bang, and the more energy the explosion produces, the louder the sound we expect to hear. Since sound is an...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

hunting for exoplanets in alien galaxies. sort of.

All right ladies and gentlemen, here’s some real scientific content to discuss. Astronomers at the ESO’s huge observatory in Chile managed to find a planet born in another galaxy and confirm that...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

jwst: gambling with the future of space science

The planned James Webb Space Telescope seems headed for three possible outcomes when it’s launched into space. It could be a major source of new science for astronomers and astrophysicists, giving new...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

how to navigate in deep space with dead stars

Not only are GPS devices useful, they’re also an ongoing experiment that keeps confirming special relativity’s spot on descriptions of how time flows for fast-moving objects. Without constant...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

searching for wormholes with general relativity

When you’re reading sci-fi stories in which some of the characters find themselves in need to cover hundreds or thousands of light years very quickly without a warp drive, they manage to make it...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

the amazing disappearing habitable world?

Gliese 581g, we hardly knew you. After a grand announcement, nearly immediate colonization plans from a leading sci-fi blog, and even a tale of supposed alien signals emanating from the newly...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

kepler delivers its first exoplanet menagerie

After looking at a tiny fraction of the stars in our sky, Kepler found over a thousand candidate planets around alien suns and is starting to give us a more accurate census of worlds beyond our solar...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

how to take a peek inside a neutron star

Have you ever wondered about the anatomy of a neutron star? You probably already know that it’s wrapped in an immensely dense crust a cubic centimeter of which would weigh as much as a small mountain...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

how to keep your ocean in interstellar space

If you think of a solar system as a stellar family, you should probably be aware that this sort of family is highly dysfunctional, especially in its early years. Planetoids viciously slam into each...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

gliese 581d gets the nod for habitability

At the rate we’re going, it seems that the first target for one of our future interstellar spacecraft will just have to be the Gliese 581 system. Beyond the initial hype generated by the announcement...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

kepler finds another candidate for alien eden

Whenever you tell someone that you have trouble believing in an omniscient, omnipresent, invisible deity who created the universe by its sheer will, but you’re certain that there is alien life...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

the dark monsters who will inherit our universe

Bizarre things are lurking out there in our universe. Titanic beasts born as space and time shatter under more than enough energy to be felt across thousands of light years, beasts with the power to...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

counting exoplanets by their gravitational wells

Depending on who you talk to, planets around alien suns are either somewhat rare due to the chaotic nature of planetary formation around infant stars, or even more plentiful than the stars themselves....

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

just how habitable is gliese 163c?

According to results from Kepler, there’s another habitable planet just 49 light years away. Well, mostly habitable by something. Gliese 163c is on the higher end of the super-earth label, coming in...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

so what does alpha centauri’s planet mean for space exploration?

After decades of trying to find out whether our closest stellar neighbors have planets we could one day explore, we finally have a confirmation that there appears to be an Earth-sized planet floating...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

and now for something surprisingly simpler

Usually a new discovery in deep space tends to further complicate our picture of the universe, almost as if the cosmos says "oh yeah, you think you have a good idea of how this works?" and throws a...

View Article
Browsing all 81 articles
Browse latest View live