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
A binary system observed by ALMA isn’t wonky, it’s the first example of an anomaly we only thought was possible until we saw it with our own eyes: a polar protoplanetary disk.
# space
The most likely candidate for alien life outside out solar system, Gliese 581g, might not really exist.
# space
An extrasolar Hot Jupiter called Upsilon Andromedae b has a hot spot in one of the strangest and most awkward possible places in its atmosphere and scientists aren't quite sure why.
# space
The best way to find Earth-sized planets is watching them pass between a telescope and their parent star. And we might get a telescope designed to spot precisely that.
# space
We've seen gas giants orbiting so close to their stars, their atmospheres are being stripped off. COROT-7b may show us what happens at the end of that process.
# space
One of the weirdest extrasolar planets we've found so far is a superheated puffball that orbits its star in the wrong direction.
# space
We knew planetary collisions should happen relatively often in young solar systems. Now we have hard evidence of one such an event.
# space
Is VB 10 a planet-sized star, or is VB 10a a star-sized planet? One of our closest stellar neighbors poses a small but interesting challenge to cosmic taxonomy.
# space
Welcome to the truly hellish world of WASP-12b, a planet being eaten by its star.