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
Water usually means life. But could too much water snuff out life before it has a chance to evolve?
# space
Astronomers looking into the orbits of Kuiper Belt objects may have found a flaw in data we thought pointed to the existence of a large planet beyond Neptune’s orbit.
# space
When some stars die, they take their entire systems with them. Others appear to give their planets a fighting chance.
# space
A new study sees evidence of more than a dozen galaxies that seem to lack dark matter and raises big questions about our ideas of galaxy formation.
# space
Why do popular science news keep offering new theories about the basic shape of our universe every week?
# 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.