Astrophysics

New simulations suggest that habitable worlds could have begun forming only 200 million years after the big bang

NASA’s SPHEREx mission will survey the entire sky in 102 different “colors” of light, offering scientists an unprecedented look at the earliest days of the universe and much more

It’s neither fast nor food, but a spectacular object called HH 30 looks appetizing for astronomers in a new image from the James Webb Space Telescope

A “ghost particle” discovered by a detector in the Mediterranean carried 30 times more energy than any neutrino observed to date

Observatories in Chile’s Atacama Desert, including the world’s largest optical telescope, could be blinded by light pollution and other unwanted side effects from the proposed construction of a renewable energy megaproject

Peculiar bursts of energy called chorus waves have been detected in deep space far from our planet, suggesting they could pose problems for long-distance space travel

Strange x-ray pulses hint at a surprisingly long-lived white dwarf orbiting precariously close to a supermassive black hole

Pluto was unseated as the ninth planet in our solar system. Will we find a real Planet Nine?

Twenty years ago today a magnetar’s epic tantrum made our planet ring like a bell from tens of thousands of light-years away

The Parker Solar Probe will swoop just 6.1 million kilometers above the sun’s surface on Christmas Eve. Scientists are thrilled at what we might learn

See the year’s most striking images from the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, NASA’s Mars rover and the best sky watching on offer

The universe’s light-starved early epochs, as well as the first stars and galaxies, lie beyond the reach of conventional observatories but could be revealed by a new generation of radio telescope arrays