Astronomers turn up the heavy metal to shed light on star formation
Astronomers from The University of Western Australia’s node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have developed a new way to study star formation in galaxies from the dawn of time to...
Asteroid 2018 VP₁ may be heading for Earth. But there’s no need to worry
Asteroid 2018 VP1 itself is too small and far away
to see clearly, so here’s an artist’s impression of a near-Earth object.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
Social media around the world lit up over the...
How a seasonal snarl-up in the mid-1500s gave us our strange rules for leap...
Really, except if you are born on February 29th, it means
little . . . but how did it come about? Image: Shuttlecock
Did you have a Happy February 29? It doesn’t come round very...
Look up! Your guide to some of the best meteor showers for 2020
A composite image of one night watching the Orionids
meteor shower. Flickr/Jeff Sullivan
Where 2019 was a disappointing year for meteor showers, with two of the big three (the Quadrantids, Perseids and Geminids) lost mainly...
A surprisingly big black hole might have swallowed a star from the inside out,...
A recently discovered black hole – found by the way it makes
a nearby star wobble – is hard to square with our understanding of how
these dark cosmic objects form. NAOC, Chinese Academy...
Why do different cultures see such similar meanings in the constellations?
The Milky Way: a pattern of stars, or a pattern of gaps?
Luke Busellato/Wikimedia Commons
Almost every person throughout the existence of humankind has looked up at the night sky and seen more than...
An asteroid just buzzed past Earth, and we barely noticed in time
Near-Earth asteroids such as Bennu, and 2019 OK which
passes close to Earth this week, pose a potential threat to our planet. NASA
A 100-metre-wide asteroid passed just 70,000km from Earth on Thursday, Australian...
Five ethical questions for how we choose to use the Moon
When (if) we go back to the Moon we need some rules
on behaviour. Flickr/coniferconifer, CC BY
The Moon has always served as an inspiration for humanity, and there are many potential benefits for further...
Why the idea of alien life now seems inevitable and possibly imminent
Relative sizes of planets that are in a zone potentially
compatible with life: Kepler-22b, Kepler-69c, Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f
and Earth (named left to right; except for Earth, these are artists’
renditions). NASA, CC BY
This article is...
First black hole photo confirms Einstein’s theory of relativity
Finally dragged out of the shadows.
Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration
Black holes are long-time superstars of science fiction. But their Hollywood fame is a little strange given that no-one has ever actually seen...
