SciShow
The Future of the Search for Life
Astronomers have found more than 5,000 planets in the last three decades, but that’s not nearly as exciting as potentially coming across the first extraterrestrial creatures. And we may finally be in a position to make that discovery.
SciShow
Hayabusa: The Artificial Meteor Launched From An Asteroid
After we retrieved samples of the moon, it was quite a while before we could land on anything else and bring bits of it back home.
SciShow
How Distant Stars Let Us See the Solar System Up Close
Occultations may sound spooky, but in actuality they can inform us of some of the most unknown parts of the universe.
SciShow
The Mystery of the Star That Wasn't There
In the 1970s, astronomers discovered a mysterious source of gamma rays that, 50 years later, still hasn’t revealed all of its secrets.
SciShow
The Ominous Reason Phobos Has Lines on It
Mars’s moon, Phobos, is striped with grooves all across its surface. But if one theory about where they came from is true, does that mean this moon might be on its way out?
SciShow
Where Did Mercury’s Spots Come From?
The Sun isn’t the only celestial body in the solar system to boast spots of its own. Mercury, too, has its fair share, and they’re worth wondering about.
SciShow
How Do You Date a Star?
Figuring out the age of a blinking speck in the sky is a difficult feat, especially if considering how many types of stars there are. This is where a Hertzsprung-Russell meets a gyrochronologist.
SciShow
Great Minds: Conny Aerts, the Starquake Professor
While doing some light reading of data from a telescope, Conny Aerts made a breakthrough that allowed her to lead the charge in the field of asteroseismology and win her the 2022 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics.
SciShow
The Spacecraft That Wasn't Designed To Land, But Did
Many space missions take billions of dollars and decades of work to get develop, but 25 years ago this spacecraft delivered stunning results on a shoestring budget and a minimal development timeline.
SciShow
Earth’s other moons
You're familiar with the Moon, but it's not only our moon, depending on your point of view.
SciShow
How Do You Find the Moon’s Best Picnic Spot?
Living on the moon won't be easy, but it might be worth taking a note from our ancestors, and setting up in caves
SciShow
This Year in Space News (That Isn't JWST)
If you’ve been distracted looking at the amazing photos The James Webb Space Telescope has taken, not to worry. Here are three other stellar stories from the last year of space science!
SciShow
Space Superlatives of 2022
As we wrap up 2022, we'd like to celebrate a few of the cosmic “winners” discovered this year, at least while they still hold their titles.
SciShow
What's Going to Space in 2023?
2022 was a pretty exciting year for space science, but what news might we expect in the coming year?
SciShow
Eavesdropping On Other Worlds
We usually only get to use our sense of sight in exploring the universe, but that hasn’t prevented scientists from trying to listen in.
SciShow
Is Our Solar System Missing Moons?
You might be pretty confident that when a moon is there it’s there to stay, but that’s not always the case. Moons may have a history of disappearing.
SciShow
JWST: Looking Beyond The Pretty Pictures
The James Webb Space Telescope isn't just for finding Pinterest worthy pictures, we're finding some amazing details in the sometimes blurry background photos.
SciShow
This Toxic Liquid Telescope from the 1850s Is Finally Useful
Sometimes looking into a pool of a toxic liquid holds the secrets of the universe–or maybe just this one time.
SciShow
The Biggest Star In The Universe Is Too Small
R136a1 is the most massive star that astronomers have ever discovered. It's so massive you might think the laws of physics wouldn't allow it. But it turns out that its current mass estimate is actually so low that it threatens our...
SciShow
We Don’t Know Why Astronauts Get Motion Sick
A majority of modern astronauts experience any one of a suite of symptoms scientists collectively call Space Motion Sickness, or SMS. But despite knowing about it for nearly as long as humans have gone into space, we still don't know...
SciShow
This is How We’ll “See” the Universe’s First Second
In June 2023, scientists around the world announced the first official detection of the gravitational wave background — a cacophonous symphony of gravitational waves coming from every direction in space. Buried within that cosmic noise,...
SciShow
The Rocket that Hopped
Surveyor 6 may not have been the first craft to make a soft landing on the Moon, but it is the first craft to take off from the surface of another world. And it did so in a very adorable way. Long before any Apollo astronaut, Surveyor 6...
SciShow
The Only Moons That Trade Places
Saturn's moons Janus and Epimetheus were once thought to be the same moon. It turns out they're dance partners.
SciShow
The Particle So Extreme Scientists Called it OMG
In 1991, a subatomic particle smashed into Earth's atmosphere traveling faster than anything humans can replicate. It's the most energetic particle detected to date, and maybe even the fastest (except light itself). Astronomers call it...