How did the universe begin? How can something come from nothing? One way to “solve” this most difficult of philosophical conundrums is to avoid it altogether. Maybe the universe didn’t begin. Maybe the Big Bang was just one in an endless...

Did you know that many of us have up to 4% neanderthal DNA? And that 100% of your DNA may come from outer space? No joke. The biochemistry that defined the coding system of your DNA may have happened off-world, and perhaps even long...

Giant space rocks are definitely going to hit the Earth again. We actually do know how to deflect them, but only if we find them and correctly assess their risk. But the solar system is a chaotic place. How is it even possible to tell if...

Planet Earth is the jewel of the solar system—the shimmery blue oceans, the verdant green forests, the wispy whimsical cloud formations. Saturn is the only competitor for most gorgeous planet with that giant ring system. Hmm… what if we...

The vacuum of space is a chaotic sea of quantum fluctuations. Some have said that this vacuum energy can be harvested to build our future starship engines, or manipulated to build warp drives. It can't. But it is technically possible to...

Big things are made of smaller things, and those smaller things are made of smaller things still. That’s reductionism in a nutshell, and digging our way to the smallest layer has been one of the primary goals of physics for ever. But...

The mystery of what happens when we go from a superposition to a definite state is known as the Measurement Problem, and it’s arguably the most mysterious outstanding problem in physics. The different interpretations of quantum mechanics...

We’re almost certainly the first technological civilization on Earth. But what if we’re not? We are. Although how sure are we, really? The Silurian hypothesis, which asks whether pre-human industrial civilizations might have existed.

In the far future we may have advanced propulsion technologies like matter-antimatter engines and compact fusion drives that allow humans to travel to other stars on timescales shorter than their own lives. But what if those technologies...

They say fusion is 50 years away, no matter when you ask. Then why are billions suddenly being pumped into fusion startups? Yes to train LLMs, but there's a reason the technobrats are bullish on fusion in particular. The fact is, the...

The biggest news in cosmology in recent years is that the mysterious universe-accelerating entity we call dark energy may be fading away. The evidence for this is now strong enough that enormous effort is going into confirming this...

A few weeks ago a large team of gravitational wave astronomers announced something pretty wild. The moderately confident detection of pervasive ripples in the fabric of space time that presumably fills the cosmos, detected by watching...

We may have planet-shattering asteroids to thank for the origin of life on Earth.

Over 200 years ago, scientists were looking at sunlight through a prism when they noticed that part of the rainbow was missing. There were dark lines where there should have been colors. Since then, scientists have unlocked the secrets...

The James Webb Telescope just took a photo of a newly discovered exoplanet. Exciting stuff but the raw image just looks like a small, faint dot—not a fully detailed world. The question is, just how big would a telescope need to be to...

In 1995, a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a top-secret, first-of-its-kind US spy satellite program was declassified, leading to the unexpected story of how former enemies would become scientific allies, and technology...

Where did life come from? It’s one of the biggest questions humans have ever asked — and the answer might be locked in ancient space rocks that were around before life began. To find out, NASA pulled off one of its most ambitious...

We know pollution is a problem on earth, but we’re filling space with our junk too. And if we don’t figure out a way to clean up space junk, we could end our interstellar dreams before they even get started. Today, we’re visiting some...

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, scientists have been constructing a cosmic measuring tape to measure the universe from our own backyard all the way to its ever-expanding edge: the cosmic distance ladder. In this video, we climb...

In March 2025, astronomers announced the "largest cosmic structure discovered to date". They called it Quipu. And Quipu is just the latest entry in a list of structures that are too big for cosmologists to explain without revisiting...

In the history of space travel, there are a few famous animal astronauts (or cosmonauts), like Laika the dog and Ham the chimpanzee. But you might not have heard of Félicette, who in 1963 became the first -- and so far only -- cat to...

From hypothetical magnetic levitation trains and space elevators that aren't even attached to the ground, to very real space cannons tested in the 1960s, humans have come up with a lot of ways to hurl stuff into outer...

If all goes well, we'll be sending astronauts back to the Moon in just a couple of years. And scientists have a lot to figure out before then, including the answer to a seemingly simple question: What time is it up...

Where is the closest black hole to Earth? Well, they're pretty hard to find, so the record-holder keeps getting updated. Currently, it's an unassuming black hole called Gaia BH1. But research has hinted at several black holes that...