Neutron stars aren't dark matter--we figured that out a while ago. But new research is telling us that they may be dark matter factories. They may produce the exotic axion, one of the most popular dark matter candidates.

All particles belong to two large groups: fermions like protons and electrons make everything we consider "matter", while bosons like photons and gluons transmit the fundamental forces. And that about covers the universe: matter moving...

Human language is an incredible thing: a combination of mouth sounds that we combine into words, sentences, poems, and constitutions. They carry meaning, emotion, and power. But underneath it all, language is really just physics. In this...

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...

Life’s been around on Earth for at least 3.7 billion years. But for most of that time, it was incredibly boring — just simple little cells squirming around in water. It only got interesting in the last few hundred million years. And that...

Scorpions are a frightening and deadly group of animals. But their venom is one of nature's most unique chemical cocktails. Here’s how scientists are using it for inspiration to design new medicines and pain killers.

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...

I was in Arizona recently for Phoenix Comic-Con, and had the amazing pleasure of seeing one of Earth's greatest natural wonders… the Grand Canyon. More than a mile deep, and several miles across, it just defies belief. But I couldn't...

Some funky orbits near the Kuiper Belt are hinting towards a brand new planet, the elusive ‘Planet X.’ Our friends Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin of Caltech are working hard to finally spot the potential gas giant through powerful...

At more than 2 meters long, Aegirocassis was not only the biggest radiodont ever, but it also may have been the biggest animal in the Early Ordovician. This bizarre marine giant may have only been possible, thanks to a major revolution...

While clubs are practically synonymous with ankylosaurs, we’ve only started to get to the bottom of how they worked and how this unusual anatomy developed in the first place.

Strange geologic landmarks in the Pacific Northwest are the lingering remains of a mystery that took nearly half a century to solve. These features turned out to be a result one of the most powerful and bizarre episodes in geologic...

The results are in - on this weeks episode of Spacetime we reveal the answer to our Asteroid Challenge, as well as our T-shirt winners! Check out who saved the world!

The Kepler telescope recently noticed a strange partial eclipse that some have speculated could be a Dyson Sphere. Are Dyson Sphere's possible? Are they practical? What other alternatives to futuristic energy capture do we have to choose...

Now that we have a primer on the aspects of the Big Bang Theory that we know definitely happened, let’s look further into what we don’t yet know, and how the theory could progress in the future. Since there is a discrepancy between...

Throughout history, there has been much speculation about what the fate of the universe would be. Many theorized that the universe would eventually succumb to the pull of gravity, and reverse its expansion in what was being called ‘The...

Fast Radio Bursts were puzzling physicist for quite some time. They were thought to be the result of large cataclysmic events such as supernovae, but this theory was proven wrong when it was discovered that they could repeat themselves....

Today, we think of penguins as small-ish, waddling, tuxedo-birds. But they evolved from a flying ancestor, were actual giants for millions of years, and some of them were even dressed a little more casually.

The story of the egg spans millions of years, from the first vertebrates that dared to venture onto land to today’s mammals, including the platypus, and of course birds. Like chickens? We’re here to tell you: The egg came first.

The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse set the stage for a takeover that would be a crucial turning point in the history of terrestrial animal life. If it weren’t for that time when the rainforests collapsed - in an extinction event that...

Woolly mammoths, our favorite ice age proboscidean, disappeared from Europe and North America at the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago. Today, we’ve teamed up with TierZoo to solve one of the mysteries about these...

For some reason, animals keep evolving into things that look like crabs, independently, over and over again. What is it about the crab’s form that makes it so evolutionarily successful that non-crabs are apparently jealous of it?

These odd rodents belong to a genus known as Ceratogaulus, but they’re more commonly called horned gophers, because, you guessed it, they had horns. And it turns out the horns probably had a purpose - one that rodents would likely...

It might surprise you but cephalopods have a pretty good fossil record, with one major exception. If squids were swimming around in the same oceans as their closest cousins, where did all the squids go?