Space

Maybe ESA’s Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) is destined to launch on the exact same date as Vanguard 1, the third artificial satellite to ever orbit our planet after…

Want to see a collision between the cores of two merging galaxies, each powered by a black hole with a  millions of times the mass of the sun? You're in luck.   NASA's Spitzer Space…

Sometimes different is good.  You may not want a strange cup of coffee when you go to Starbucks and you would like for your car to work the way cars should, but in science the peculiar can teach…

Our website got hacked. Astronomy sites are a popular target. It's safer to hack NASA than, say, the NSA. All the bragging but little of the risks. Hacking NASA to get at 'inside stuff' is…

Researchers have found evidence suggesting that stars rich in carbon complex molecules may form at the center of our Milky Way galaxy - and it helps solve a mystery.   Namely, why have…

A new map combining nearly three months of data from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is giving astronomers an unprecedented look at the high-energy cosmos. To Fermi's "eyes", the universe is…

The Wii game 'Super Mario Galaxy' is a triumph of inventive game play and a favorite in our family. But oh, the muddled science message is like a bad version of the old "Who's on First" routine. In…

Astronomers have obtained exceptional 3D views of distant galaxies, seen when the Universe was half its current age, by combining the the Hubble Space Telescope’s acute eye and the ESO’s Very Large…

Is Pluto a planet? On Tuesday I talked about how 'Algol' isn't technically an Algol-type star system. This raised the interesting case of "is Pluto a planet". To a large degree, that's a non-…

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found within Saturn's G ring an embedded moonlet that appears as a faint, moving pinprick of light. Scientists now believe it is a main source of the G ring and its…