Exploring bleeding edge experiments, oddities, new and bizarre dicoveries, and fact-checking conspiracy theories since 2008. No question is out of bounds and no topic is too strange for a deep dive.
# space
According to sensationalistic headlines, the hypothetical ninth planet in our solar system is a tennis ball sized black hole. According to physics, it's far more likely to be literally anything else.
# space
The massive structure designed to capture the energy of an entire star envisioned by Freeman Dyson is popular in science fiction. But can we build it? And have alien civilizations tried a similar idea?
# space
We know that black holes are bizarre. We know they exist. We even have a picture of one. But what exactly are they?
# space
By now, you're probably used to hearing about potentially habitable worlds orbiting other stars. But that "potentially habitable" part may come with more caveats than you might think.
# podcast
Far from being just a slightly bigger rocky sphere than our planet, Super-Earths are a fascinating class of worlds ranging from Earths with a few extra tons to failed seeds of gas giants.
# podcast
If you really want to understand space, you need to understand black holes. Although, to be fair, understanding them is still very much a work in progress…
# space
The Event Horizon Telescope’s image of M87* is so good that theorists thought it was too good to be true.
# astrobiology
A star named V883 Ori is going through a growth spurt, and as it does, it’s showing us just how abundant the building blocks of life might be throughout the universe.
# space
A recent paper imagines a new explanation for the strange motions of Trans-Neptunian Objects observed by astronomers for the last 200 years, but it doesn’t mean that we won’t still search for Planet Nine.
# space
Saturn’s rings are young and might be gone almost as quickly as they appeared in planetary terms, according to the latest research by NASA.