Space & Physics

Hubble telescope in space, Earth and sun in background

The UniverseJanuary 17, 2025

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope Was Never Meant to Look at the Sun. Astronomers Tried It Anyway

A little-known chapter of the Hubble Space Telescope’s history is a reminder of the risks of looking at the sun

Phil Plait

A Blue Origin New Glenn rocket is seen on the launch pad on Dec. 19, 2024, at Launch Complex-36 during a wet dress rehearsal test ahead of the rocket's maiden flight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Florida

Space ExplorationJanuary 16, 2025

Blue Origin’s New Glenn Rocket Finally Takes Flight

The heavy-lift New Glenn rocket soared to success, reaching orbit on its highly anticipated inaugural flight but failing to land its booster on an ocean barge

Nadia Drake

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An illustration of a private U.S. lander on the surface of the moon

Space ExplorationJanuary 15, 2025

Blue Ghost, a Private U.S. Lunar Lander, Launches to the Moon

A Texas-built lander named Blue Ghost marks another test of NASA’s new lunar delivery initiative

Michael Greshko

Conceptual illustration of a Majorana fermion which is also its own antiparticle. A fermion is a sub-atomic particle that has a half-integer spin

Quantum PhysicsJanuary 13, 2025

Exotic ‘Paraparticles’ That Defy Categorization May Exist in Many Dimensions

Theoretical physicists predict the existence of exotic “paraparticles” that defy classification and could have quantum computing applications

Davide Castelvecchi, Nature magazine

A small blue sphere orbits a larger blue sphere on a purple and blue background, with "Science Quickly" written below.

HealthJanuary 13, 2025

A Death from Bird Flu, a Cosmic Kiss and Wildfires in L.A.

In this week’s news rundown, norovirus cases are up, a bird flu death is reported and Los Angeles has experienced devastating fires.

Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Jeffery DelViscio

A partial solar eclipse viewed from Southern Utah.

The UniverseJanuary 10, 2025

Here’s What to Watch in 2025’s Skies

The heavens will provide a bounty of viewing treasures in the coming year

Phil Plait

A small blue sphere orbits a larger green sphere against a purple background, with "Science Quickly" written underneath.

AstronomyJanuary 10, 2025

Largest Camera in the World Will Look for Planet Nine

Pluto was unseated as the ninth planet in our solar system. Will we find a real Planet Nine?

Rachel Feltman, Clara Moskowitz, Fonda Mwangi, Madison Goldberg

A selfie of NASA's Perseverance Mars rover with sample tubes it deposited at a sample depot it is creating within an area of Jezero Crater nicknamed "Three Forks." The ninth tube dropped during the construction of the depot, containing the sample the science team refers to as "Atsah," can be seen in front of the rover. Other sample tubes are visible in the background.

Planetary ScienceJanuary 9, 2025

NASA’s Mars Sample Return Program Faces Stark Choices

NASA sees two paths for saving its beleaguered plan to retrieve materials from the Red Planet but won’t choose between them until 2026

Lee Billings

A composite of enhanced color images of Pluto (lower right) and Charon (upper left), taken by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft as it passed through the Pluto system on July 14, 2015. The color and brightness of both Pluto and Charon have been processed identically to allow direct comparison of their surface properties, and to highlight the similarity between Charon's polar red terrain and Pluto's equatorial red terrain. Pluto and Charon are shown with approximately correct relative sizes, but their true separation is not to scale. The image combines blue, red and infrared images taken by the spacecraft's Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera (MVIC)

Planetary ScienceJanuary 8, 2025

Pluto May Have Won Its Moon Charon with a ‘Kiss’

Pluto and its largest moon Charon could have come together via a 10-hour “kiss-and-capture” encounter after a grazing collision

Robert Lea, SPACE.com

A still image from a conceptual animation showing the heliosphere — the vast bubble that is generated by the Sun’s magnetic field and envelops all the planets

Space ExplorationJanuary 3, 2025

Heliophysics Is Set to Shine in 2025

The science of the sun and its effects on the solar system is a sprawling discipline that expects a very exciting 2025

Meghan Bartels

A 17th-century celestial map showing depictions of the zodiacal constellations

The UniverseJanuary 3, 2025

What Is the Zodiac—And What Does It Mean for You?

The familiar zodiac constellations are defined by Earth’s motion around the sun, but they don’t define your fate

Phil Plait

An illustration of the cosmic web, the universe’s large-scale structure of galaxy clusters and matter-sparse voids.

CosmologyJanuary 1, 2025

Do We Live in a Special Part of the Universe?

According to a tenet scientists call the cosmological principle, our place in space is in no way exceptional. But recent observations could overturn this long-held assumption

Sarah Scoles

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