Station-ary Progress
Tiangong-1 is dead. Long live Tiangong-2. China’s first space station fell to the Earth on April 2, disintegrating over the Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America. Launched in 2011, contact with the...
Long Shot: Gigawatt lasers, miniature spacecraft, and a new way to fly
A countdown. Ignition. Channeled tongues of fire push the ground away. A rocket races towards space. This is humanity’s route to the stars. Or maybe not. “It’s completely different.” “It...
Cosmic Rays and Archaeology
Physics can tell us about space-time and the movement of particles, but what can it tell us about people and past cultures? The archaeological record tells us a great deal about past peoples that inhabited the...
Dark Energy: The Mysterious Substance Pushing Us Apart
At the beginning of time, the universe exploded into existence in an event known as the Big Bang. Fast forward to the present day, when the universe has been expanding for approximately 13.8 billion years. But...
Fields United: Bridging the Gap Between Biology and Physics
In high school, your science education most likely consisted of sharply segmented classes such as biology and physics with no overlap. But what if the real world doesn’t work this way? Within...
Strangers Passing in the Night
By the time she was noticed, she was already leaving. “She,” in this case is asteroid 1I/2017 U1, affectionately named ‘Oumuamua, which made headlines around the world last November when it was...
Quantum Keys
Quantum Computing has been projected to radically enhance computing power, which, at face value, sounds like a great advancement for the tech world. However, the increased power that brings quantum computing...
Big Falcon Rocket: The Future of Spaceflight
On July 20, 1969, the first humans set foot on the moon. Nearly half a century later, humanity is finally ready to take on Mars. As in the 1960s, NASA remains one of the major organizations...
Discovering Saturn: Cassini’s Grand Finale
Saturn: the jewel of our solar system. Wheeling in its lonely orbit around the Sun, the sheer magnificence of the gas giant and its rings have fascinated observers on Earth since the time of Galileo. However,...
Seeing the First Light in the Universe
Soon, we may be able to peer back in time and “see the first light in the universe.” NASA has been using this bold promise to generate buzz for the 2018 James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). But, the...