Jan 29 Skip the fairy tales, and tell your daughter science bedtime stories By Wendy Thomas Russell I was never very good at science. Mostly because it was taught to me the same way math was taught to me: It wasn’t. I mean it was, technically. But not in a way that inspired me or held my… Continue reading
Jan 27 Kepler finds galaxy’s oldest solar system By Rebecca Jacobson, Inside Energy The Kepler Space Telescope found the oldest solar system in the galaxy. While digging through backlogged data from the Kepler telescope, scientists found Kepler-444, an 11.2 billion year-old star in the Milky Way orbited by at least five Earth-sized planets. Continue reading
Jan 07 You can read a star’s age by its spin By Justin Scuiletti It turns out, like us, stars slow down in their old age. That observation is the key to a new method astronomers are using to accurately tell the age of cool stars — stars that match the size of, or… Continue reading
Jan 06 Hubble’s new high-definition pic shows Pillars of Creation fading away and stars being born By Rebecca Jacobson, Inside Energy In 1995, the Hubble Telescope snapped a stunning photo in the Eagle Nebula, 6,500 light years from Earth. The photo revealed three gigantic columns of cold gas, illuminated by the ultraviolet light from nearby young stars. The Pillars of Creation… Continue reading
Nov 25 How seeing a black hole’s shadow will tell us if Einstein was right By Rebecca Jacobson, Inside Energy Black holes are some of the most exotic objects in our universe. But how do you see something that, by definition, you can't see? The answer will take a telescope the size of the Earth. Continue reading
Nov 08 Watch ALMA telescope spots birth of a planet in ‘milestone’ discovery By PBS News Hour Using the ALMA radio telescope in Chile, astronomers were able to capture the formation of a new planet, and scientists are observing it happen more clearly than ever before. Hari Sreenivasan reports. Continue watching
Oct 17 Watch Tracking killer comets before they strike By PBS News Hour It's only a matter of time before a big comet or asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. Will scientists discover it, and be able to do something about it, ahead of time? Science correspondent Miles O'Brien talks to… Continue watching
Sep 10 This telescope is so extreme, the weak of heart need not apply By Joshua Barajas and Rebecca Jacobson, Inside Energy Deadly altitudes, breathtaking skies, treacherous roads, wild donkeys -- it's all part of working on the most sophisticated telescope in the world. Continue reading
Aug 07 The $2 trillion economic risk you haven’t heard about By Donald Goldsmith Beyond Earth's atmosphere lurks a threat that could knock out our electrical grid and cause catastrophic structural, not to mention economic, damage. The risk within the next decade is about as great as that of another earthquake shaking California. So… Continue reading
Jul 26 Solar ‘superstorm’ missed Earth in 2012 — but another could strike By Xander Landen Two years ago, the worst solar storm in almost two centuries tore through Earth's orbit. Luckily, the storm's path just missed Earth. Continue reading