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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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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...
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