A Martian Volcano Gets Bad Breath in Summer
The gas belongs in the southern sky, where the seasons explain it. Up north it keeps surfacing over one cracked slope, and the leading suspect sits underground.
Signal
Grew up under Flagstaff’s dark skies, studied planetary science, spent a semester at ALMA, and is now a virtual contributor to YGBFKM. Convinced the universe is stranger than we’re told and plans to prove it. Has two cats: Sagan and Fermi.
A Black Hole Might Split in Two by Growing a Pair of Pants
Merging black holes are old news. Physics nearly forbids the reverse, but a few strange loopholes stay open.
This Earth Has Never Held Life. It Still Looks Like Home.
A planet can look perfectly livable without a single living thing on it. So how would a telescope ever tell an empty world from an inhabited one?
A Comet From Another Star Arrived With an Accent
Something drifting in from deep space carries a chemical fingerprint our comets don't match. It hints at what kind of star made it. Where that star is remains a mystery.
Phoenix Planet Seems Reborn From Star's Ashes
This star's light holds a metal no white dwarf had shown before. The planet suspected of feeding it was born in a way ordinary worlds are not.
A Neutrino Arrived Alone. A Fifth Dimension May Have Kept the Light.
Something may have exploded on our cosmic doorstep and sent exactly one messenger. Everything else that should have escaped never showed up. So where did it go?
Venus May Have Eaten Its Own Moon
Venus is moonless today. It might have kept a moon for close to 2 billion years. What became of it is the part that keeps the question open.
When a Star Steals a Planet, the Moons Go Too
A rogue planet flung into interstellar darkness might not be traveling solo. One of the things it could be dragging along has a hidden ocean in it.
Betelgeuse Is Haunted by a Hotspot That Should Be Long Gone
The surface of a dying giant should never look the same twice. Two images taken years apart show one bright patch that never got reshuffled. What is holding it there?
The Sun Is the Prime Suspect in a Missing Planet Case
Three long-standing mysteries about our sun. One proposed explanation that's either brilliant or deeply unsettling. What exactly is buried down there?
Earth Microbes Auditioned for Saturn's Ocean Moon. They Got the Part.
The microbes weren't supposed to make it. Researchers called it a long shot. Then they adapted, grew and started producing the exact gas Cassini already found venting into space.
A Planet Twice Earth's Size Is Orbiting Its Star Backward
Planets are supposed to inherit their star's direction of rotation. Astronomers looked for something that could have knocked this one backward. They couldn't find it.
This Baby Planet Is Already as Massive as Jupiter. It's Not Even a Million Years Old.
Theory gives a giant planet about 5 million years to grow, and longer the farther out it sits. This one sits very far out, and it didn't wait.
A Dark Road, September 19, 1961: The First Documented Alien Abduction in America
A four hour drive home took seven, and neither of them could say why. The Hills' story became the template for alien abductions.
Saturn's North Pole Has a Hexagon. The South Pole One-Upped It.
A giant new atmospheric shape has appeared around Saturn's south pole, big enough to swallow eight Earths. Scientists can't say when it formed, only that it wasn't there before.
One Galaxy Has Three Supermassive Black Holes, Two of Them on a Collision Course
One galaxy is host to three actively feeding black holes. Two are locked in a slow-motion merger, and the third's origin remains an open question the universe won't answer yet.
Venus Is Pulling Itself Apart. Slowly. But Right Now.
Three of Venus's biggest canyons may still be spreading open today. What's causing the stretching?
Mars' Childhood Didn't Go According to Plan
A four-billion-year-old rock sat in the Sahara until 2022, then rewrote the early history of a neighboring planet. How does a world with no tectonic plates end up growing granite?