I/ATLAS is a fast, ancient interstellar object. Its odd features fuel both scientific study and speculation. On July 1, ...

The debate over the existence of extraterrestrial life touches literature, religion, and science in 17th century Europe.

The dwarf planet Pluto and its five known natural satellites (Charon, Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra) may be frigid, but ...

In 40,000 years, long after its mission is over, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft will have a close encounter with Gliese 445. It ...

Gravity not only holds us firmly to the ground but also anchors oceans, keeps the atmosphere in place, and binds planets and ...

The main driver of coal’s increase and gas’ decrease is that the U.S. benchmark price of natural gas was up substantially in ...

Astronomer and Pluto mission leader S. Alan Stern explores how the field has transformed during his decades-long career.

The morning sky boasts the two brightest planets. Jupiter rises soon after midnight and is well up in the south-southeast sky ...

For decades, scientists have imagined planet formation as a calm and orderly process. The picture was simple: young stars surrounded by flat, pancake-like disks of dust and gas, where small particles ...

Most planet-forming disks have warps that can lead to planets on inclined orbits, which could explain where the tilt of Earth's orbit came from. The origin of the differing tilts in the orbits of the ...

The textbook picture of how planets form—serene, flat disks of cosmic dust—has just received a significant cosmic twist. New research, published in Astrophysical Journal Letters, is set to reshape ...

Two of the objects in the arrangement are cold brown dwarfs, which will serve as a benchmark for others throughout the Milky Way. By Katrina Miller Zenghua Zhang, an astronomer at Nanjing University ...