Space

Giant planets have diverse chemistry; Jupiter, for example, first formed as a large solid core and then then accreted gas from the disk around it, which led to a different chemistry in its outer…

Type Ia supernovae are important for measuring the universe because they're bright enough to be seen across large distances and similar enough to be a reference, an an object of known luminosity -…

Stars live for a long time - millions of years - but near the end of their lives, some massive stars go through what astronomers call the yellow supergiant phase. Because the timeframe is so short,…

Last week it was asteroid mining, as Peter Diamandis and his partners showed us their bold new venture, Planetary Resources, aiming eventually to start harvesting trillions of dollars worth of…

Our solar system is believed to be around 4.5 billion years old, but it's difficult to know how long it actually took to form.   The reason is, basically, our 'clocks'.   Establishing…

Research suggests that the explosion of massive stars near the Solar System has strongly influenced the development of life. When the most massive stars exhaust their available fuel and reach…

I've been a great admirer of GRACE since the first time I 'met her'. That was at a meeting in Potsdam, Germany, a beautiful city just outside (on the 'wrong side' = old Eastern Germany) Berlin. I…

Half-mile-sized objects have been seen punching through parts of Saturn's F ring, leaving glittering trails behind them.  These mini-jets' trails in the rings fill in a missing link in our…

Here's an astronomy puzzles: Rather than occupying orbits at regular distances from a star, giant gas planets, like Jupiter and Saturn in our solar system, appear to prefer to occupy certain regions…

It appears that a small cabal of  billionaires -- those who got rich through innovation and who feel loyal to the future -- are about to to fund a new effort worth some excitement and attention…