Physics/Space

For those upset by the recent downgrading of our solar system from nine to eight planets, there is a new hope! Research by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) suggests that...

1,963. That is the number of confirmed exoplanets as of March 2016, according to NASA. With a backlog of 4,696 potential exoplanet candidates, the number is likely to keep rocketing upwards, just as it has...

When we think of the dangers that space flight poses to humans, we tend to worry about macro problems. What if the shuttle’s engine fails? What if an asteroid hits the shuttle? What if the shuttle hits a...

For more than a decade it has been widely accepted that the center of the Milky Way is not, in fact, nougaty caramel, but a supermassive black hole. Due to the nature of the region surrounding the black hole,...

The Ultimate Game Changers In an art gallery, the lighting in which a piece of art is shown is incredibly important to the viewer’s experience. Dial up the light provided by a spotlight overhead, and the...

How can scientists measure or observe things that are an immense distance away? And how can scientists view objects in space that do not even produce light? These questions, and more, were answered in an...

What is redshift? Everyone is familiar with the sound a passing siren makes: the distant noise, the buildup, the peak in pitch as it passes you, and finally the fading of the siren as the vehicle races into...

Space is known as the inhospitable final frontier; challenges to biological organisms — notably, humans — come to mind. However, an often overlooked issue is the immense challenges posed to electronics in...

The Potential for Life and Exploration on Mars This summer, a group of scientists found groundbreaking evidence of recently flowing liquid water on Mars. Since this was confirmed by NASA, the resulting...

Despite assurance by Nima Arkani-Hamed, particle theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study, that collision experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) would not result in a cataclysmic doomsday scenario,...