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why planet nine may not actually exist
What lies beyond Neptune, in the cold outer reaches of our solar system? Is it a super-Earth? A brown dwarf? A weird, planet-like rubble pile? A primordial black hole? Whatever it is, there’s bound to...
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in an ironic twist, ocean worlds could be hostile to life
When it comes to looking for life, the general rule is to look for water, or at least a fluid that can behave like water in living cells. Being a solvent, it’s perfect for facilitating chemical...
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why neutron stars may be the coolest objects in the universe
Illustration by Kurzgesagt Popular science and science fiction have long been fascinated by black holes, and for very good reason. They’re objects whose widespread existence seems to defy the laws of...
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when stars become cannibalistic parasites
By now you probably know the lifecycle of a typical star. Born in vast nurseries of gas and dust called nebulae by the thousands they drift apart to burn until they run out of fuel, with massive ones...
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wowt explains: what is a black hole?
Over the century or so that we’ve been interested in black holes, we’ve gotten so comfortable with the term that it barely phases us when it’s mentioned. But much of what we typically think we know...
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wowt explains: what is a dyson sphere?
Imagine that you live on an ancient, distant planet orbiting a dying star. Your world relies on its light to survive and as it fades, it gets colder and more hostile to live in the place your species...
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why planet nine is very unlikely to be a tiny black hole
Since the 1880s, astronomers have been hunting for some way to explain the odd motion of small objects past the orbit of Neptune, typically a planet massive enough to be a super-Earth or a smaller gas...
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so, what shape is the universe?
Early last month, a paper claiming that we’ve misunderstood the shape of our universe made the media rounds on popular science sites before being mocked by The Daily Show because the only nerds Trevor...
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astronomers find more dark matter free galaxies
Just in case you thought cosmologists moved any closer to understanding dark matter over the last year, prepare to be disappointed. While a proposed discovery claimed to find two galaxies that lacked...
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a planet four times the size of its star shows how solar systems die
As you no doubt learned in elementary school, stars are big and bright, and planets are dim and small. So, following that basic logic, there’s absolutely no way that one could have a planet four times...
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why planet nine may not actually exist
What lies beyond Neptune, in the cold outer reaches of our solar system? Is it a super-Earth? A brown dwarf? A weird, planet-like rubble pile? A primordial black hole? Whatever it is, there’s bound to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
in an ironic twist, ocean worlds could be hostile to life
When it comes to looking for life, the general rule is to look for water, or at least a fluid that can behave like water in living cells. Being a solvent, it’s perfect for facilitating chemical...
View ArticleClik here to view.
why neutron stars may be the coolest objects in the universe
Illustration by Kurzgesagt Popular science and science fiction have long been fascinated by black holes, and for very good reason. They’re objects whose widespread existence seems to defy the laws of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
nothing to see in the galactic core, move along
There’s a mystery at the core of the Milky Way. A flashing, pulsating object is emitting an odd, spiraling radio wave and leaving astronomers stumped as they try to figure out what it is. Stars,...
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oddball earth: why our planet really is different
A guiding principle of cosmology is that no place in the universe is any more or less special than another without some very extensive and convincing evidence otherwise, and according to our...
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what is a planet anyway? astronomers campaign to avenge pluto
Let’s travel back to the late 2000s, to carefree days when the biggest acrimony in the popular science world was Pluto’s demotion to a Kuiper Belt object. While the decision was made by an...
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world of weird things podcast: probing the mysteries of space with the fishes
Space, the final frontier, a place of endless possibility, wonder, and opportunity. And a whole lot of weird stuff that challenges your ideas of what you think you knew about the universe you inhabit....
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how to spot aliens with a telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope, the world’s most expensive and high stakes origami project, is now safely deployed and parked almost a million miles away from Earth in the L2 gravity well. For the...
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conspiracy theorists go after the james webb space telescope
While the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the world’s most expensive and complicated origami project parked a million miles from Earth, were generally met with awe and comparisons to...
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where is planet nine hiding? and does it actually exist?
Illustration by Vadim Sadovski We’ve been looking for another planet beyond Pluto’s orbit for nearly a century because a small gas giant or a Super-Earth, would explain the strange orbits of rocky...
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