Space

Roughly 90 percent of the biggest black holes are dormant, meaning that they are not actively devouring matter and therefore not giving off any light or other radiation. Yet dormant is not dead, so…

Venus has an "electric wind" strong enough to remove the components of water from its upper atmosphere, which may have played a significant role in stripping Earth's twin planet of its oceans,…

Chiral molecules, compounds that come in otherwise identical mirror image variations, like a pair of human hands--are crucial to life as we know it. Living things are selective about which "…

In the race towards the discovery of another planet in our solar system, the ninth or tenth depending on how seriously you take the 2 percent of astronomers who demoted Pluto, scientists are striving…

When anti-science activists set out to drive astronomy from the state of Arizona by trumping up an environmental hazard, they were failing to prevent a problem that would creep across many places…

Astronomers have used Hubble to measure the distances to stars in nineteen galaxies more accurately than previously possible. They found that the Universe is currently expanding faster than the rate…

I'll be on David Livingston's the Space Show this Friday, 27th May, to talk about my new "Case for Moon". It's main themes are: first, the Moon as our natural first destination in the solar system.…

One belief is that Jupiter's moon Europa has a deep, hidden ocean of salty liquid water beneath its icy shell. Whether the Jovian moon has the raw materials and chemical energy in the right…

Using the oldest fossil micrometeorites - space dust - ever found, Monash University-led research has made a surprising discovery about the chemistry of Earth's atmosphere 2.7 billion years ago. The…

Unlike most asteroids, C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS) was formed in the inner Solar System at the same time as the Earth itself, but was ejected at a very early stage and has not been baked by billions of…