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
NASA appears to be sick and tired of having to wait until the mid-2020s to return to the Moon on a future rocket that will be inferior to the private ones already flying, and easily lapped by ones currently being built.
# space
It may be tempting to use our nuclear warheads to save the planet from rogue space rocks instead of pointing them at each other, it would be a waste of perfectly good nukes.
# space
Now that Opportunity’s mission is complete, many wistfully lament about “bringing our robot home.” There’s just one problem: it’s already home.
# space
Buckle up steampunk enthusiasts, it turns out that not only are steam-powered space probes possible, they might be perfect for hopping between comets and asteroids on research and mining missions.
# space
Super-Earths are often thought of as just bigger version of our own planet on steroids. But these worlds offer us amazing insights into everything from plate tectonics to planetary formation and classification.
# space
Mars One was an impossible dream. No, literally. As in not possible and could never happen. Now the company is bankrupt and its mission plans abandoned, which is really for the best.
# podcast
In sci-fi movies, explorers arrive on alien worlds in the blink of an eye using warp drives, or cheat time with cryogenic sleep chambers. But how would interstellar travel actually work in the real world?
# science
Paradoxically, we’re both closer and farther from zooming across the galaxy than you might think…
# 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.
# astrobiology
New models trying to infer the geology of potentially habitable moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn hint at surprisingly cool, geologically inactive worlds, the opposite of what a diverse alien ecosystem would need.