While the upcoming total solar eclipse is a special moment to reflect on our place in the universe, scientists have been studying the birth of the sun and the formation of our solar system for a long time.
Humans have been digging underground for millennia—on the Earth. It's where we extract some of our most valuable resources that have moved society forward. For example, there wouldn't have been a Bronze Age without tin ...
If you've ever been taught about how Earth orbits around the sun, you might well think our planet travels along an oval-shaped path that brings it much closer to the sun at some times of the year than at others. You'd have ...
Europa is one of the largest of more than 90 moons in orbit around the planet Jupiter. It is also one of the best places to look for alien life.
As the infrared space telescope continues its long-duration survey of the universe, it is creating a unique resource for future astronomers to make new discoveries.
Astronomers are pretty sure they know where the moon came from. In the early solar system, a Mars-sized object dubbed Theia smashed into Earth. This cataclysmic collision knocked a huge mass of material into orbit, which ...
For almost 15 years, scientists have debated whether the Anthropocene should be an official geological epoch marking the profound influence of humans on the planet. Then in March, an international panel of scientists formally ...
Earth was long thought to be the only planet in our solar system with an ocean, but it is beginning to look as though there are underground oceans inside even the most surprising icy bodies.
How Earth and the other planets of the solar system formed and evolved over the eons is a hot question for planetary scientists like me. One of the best ways to find out is by looking at rocks from space.
In medieval and Renaissance society and culture, celestial events were not mere spectacles in the sky. Rather, they were omens, predictors of the future, and windows into the workings of the universe.
