How do the biggest black holes in the universe form? Ripples in spacetime provide a clue

Merging black holes and neutron stars have unusual oval orbits prior to colliding and merging, which challenge the laws of physics.

Should Saturn’s huge moon Titan be humanity’s next destination, after the moon and Mars?

Next month, a first-of-its-kind gathering will blueprint an eventual crewed trek to tantalizing Titan, the largest of Saturn’s many moons.

How an exoplanet odd couple survived by traveling in from the cold together

By probing the atmosphere of a mini-Neptune exoplanet, the James Webb Space Telescope has found that it formed much farther from its star than it is today, possibly explaining the origin of many other mini-Neptunes in the …

3 puzzles of our universe could be solved with this new dark matter theory

A new recipe of dark matter that interacts with itself could be the solution to three separate and vastly different cosmic puzzles.

Scientists created one of the largest simulations of our universe ever — about the size of 500,000 HD movies

The FLAMINGO project helps scientists explore how galaxies, dark matter and cosmic structures evolved over billions of years.

Solar activity makes space junk crash to Earth faster

Scientists studied how space junk moved in orbit over a 36-year span, finding that increased solar activity caused it to fall to Earth faster.

Mexico City is sinking up to 14 inches per year, satellite images show

Mexico City is one of the fastest subsiding cities in the world, dropping by up to 14 inches every year.

A tiny ‘plutino’ world beyond Neptune has grown a mysterious atmosphere, and we don’t know how

A trans-Neptunian object was found to possess a surprising thin atmosphere after astronomers witnessed the object occult a distant star.

NASA is making a powerful new ion engine to send astronauts to Mars — and it just passed its 1st test

A prototype ion engine that uses lithium metal vapor as a propellant has aced its first tests, achieving 25 times more power than the ion engine on the Psyche mission.

James Webb Space Telescope directly studies an exoplanet’s surface for the 1st time: ‘We see a dark, hot, barren rock’

Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have directly analyzed the surface of a distant super-Earth, revealing a dark, airless, Mercury-like world.