Astronomy

Dwarf planetary systems will transform the hunt for alien life

Amaury Triaud & Michaël Gillon

A journey from the Himalayas to the edge of our cosmic horizon in space and time

7 minutes

Echoes of a black hole

Ripples in space-time could herald the demise of general relativity and its replacement by a quantum theory of gravity

Sabine Hossenfelder

How many great minds does it take to invent a telescope?

Thony Christie

Our Universe is too vast for even the most imaginative sci-fi

Michael Strauss

The plodding photon, or how the speed of light looks sluggish on a galactic scale

45 minutes

Why we can stop worrying and love the particle accelerator

Joel Frohlich

Has dogma derailed the scientific search for dark matter?

Pavel Kroupa

When we look for aliens, why do we always find ourselves staring back?

5 minutes

Imagine alien signals are detected. Here’s what happens next

3 minutes

Opposition to Galileo was scientific, not just religious

Christopher Graney

What else do we lose when we lose sight of the stars?

3 minutes

Gravitational waves will bring the extreme universe into view

Daniel Hoak

The struggle of women in science is written in the stars

Leila A McNeill

How the face of a distant star reveals our place in the cosmos

Rachael Roettenbacher

Experience the eerie serenity of 100,000 asteroids in orbit

3 minutes

It might be our placid nocturnal companion, but the Moon has a turbulent past

3 minutes

How far beyond Earth will we go to safeguard our species?

Paul Gilster

Life rocks

Could meteorites be akin to lifeboats from other planets? Or do they reveal more about life on Earth than off it?

Philip Ball

Why our imagination for alien life is so impoverished

Philip Ball

Life on Mars

In a white dome on a bare mountain, six of us are road-testing life in a Martian colony. This is what I’ve learned so far

Sheyna Gifford

Finding alien life raises huge ethical questions. Finding we’re alone does, too

6 minutes

Let the Sun’s invisible solar winds wash over you in ultra high-definition video

30 minutes

The superfluid Universe

Quantum effects are not just subatomic: they can be expressed across galaxies, and solve the puzzle of dark matter

Sabine Hossenfelder

How pigeon droppings nearly derailed a massive discovery in cosmology

3 minutes

Take a 10 billion-year journey with a photon, from a distant supernova to Earth

3 minutes

In her dreams, the first Briton in space revisits staggering views of the Earth

3 minutes