An initiative called Breakthrough Starshot wants to explore another star system using ultra-powerful laser beams and wafer-thin spaceships.

Ever since the Apollo missions explored the lunar surface, scientists have known that the Moon's craters are the result of a long history of meteor and asteroid impacts. But it has only been in the past few decades that we have come to understand h

Black holes are great at sucking up matter. So great, in fact, that not even light can escape their grasp (hence the name).

Envision yourself rising above the Earth and noticing the revolutions of the planets around our Sun. From there you take notice of our Sun dancing with its companion and that this companionship is but one in many within our Milky Way galaxy. Take yourself…

All the planets in our Solar System have their charms, but few are as flashy and iconic as Saturn's glorious rings. But, like everything in the Universe, they're not going to last forever - and now planetary scientists have discovered that they're

Whatever you're doing for your New Year's celebrations, it's not going to be as awesome as New Horizons. On New Year's Day, the space probe will zoom right up close past an object in the Kuiper Belt called 2014 MU69 - nicknamed Ultima Thule.

Scientists have known for some time that Earth's atmosphere loses several hundred tons of oxygen each day. They understand how this oxygen loss happens on Earth's night side, but they're not sure how it happens on the day side.

Precious stones might be relatively rare and hidden deep underground here on Earth, but space is an absolute treasure chest. Astronomers have found a new class of planets, and they're so abundant in the compounds that make sapphires and rubies, the

While the presence of liquid water on Mars remains an ongoing topic of intense interest, we know that there is plenty of water ice adorning the Red Planet - and boy can it ever look amazing, as new images from the European Space Agency's Mars Expre

We still don't know what dark matter is, but new research has brought us closer to figuring out where it might sit.

Groundbreaking physicist Stephen Hawking left us one last shimmering piece of brilliance before he died: his final paper, detailing his last theory on the origin of the Universe, co-authored with Thomas Hertog from KU Leuven.

1. In Australia, birds of prey deliberately start forest fires - wielding flaming sticks to do so. Indigenous people have known of these 'firehawk raptors' for quite some time, but now we also have scientific research describing this stunning pheno

The pilot installation of the world’s only metallurgical furnace capable of processing iron-containing industrial waste as well as solid…

Support my work on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/melodysheep My tribute to one of the coolest objects mankind has ever produced - the Voyager Golden Record. Knowing that a billion years from now these two messengers will still be out there is mind-bendingly…

You've heard of hot Jupiters. You've heard of mini-Neptunes. You've heard of super-Earths. But have you heard of Eyeball Planets? Yep - planetary scientists think there might be a type of exoplanet out there that looks disturbingly like a giant eye

What would convince you that aliens existed? The question came up recently at a conference on astrobiology, held at Stanford University in California.

Above our heads, something is not right. Earth's magnetic field is in a state of dramatic weakening – and according to mind-boggling research from earlier this year, this phenomenal disruption is part of a pattern lasting for over 1,000 years.

Each year the London-based data science company Altmetric releases a ranking of the 100 most popular research articles of the past 12 months - based on their analysis of "online activity around scholarly literature".

Dogs, cats, or goldfish probably can't have conversations with each other about times long gone by – it's a feature we've thought was pretty much exclusive to humans.