Astronomers Determine that Exoplanets Around Barnard's Star are Extremely Uninhabitable

Scientists have painted the most detailed portrait yet of the planetary system orbiting Barnard’s Star. Unfortunately, the picture is not encouraging, as all four planets appear to be "extremely uninhabitable."

Meet Our Newest Stellar Neighbours That Hid in the Glare of Other Stars

Astronomers have found four new white dwarfs within about 65 light years. Even though the sky has been studied thoroughly, these escaped detection. That's because they're tight binaries with red dwarf partners, and the much brighter red dwarfs hide the white dwarfs. The binaries used to share common envelopes.

A Star Orbiting Our Galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole Tests the Limits of Relativity

A Sun-like star orbits the supermassive black hole in our Milky Way so closely that it comes within the distance of Neptune's orbit of the Sun. It has a top speed of more than 8% of light speed. With such extreme motion the star gives astronomers the opportunity to test the limits of general relativity.

Chandrasekhar and the Limits of Physics, Part 1: Triumph

The story of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who as a teenager on an ocean voyage worked out that white dwarf stars have a maximum mass of 1.4 Suns. A tour of degeneracy pressure, the relativistic insight everyone else missed, and the number that would define his life.

The First Breath of Another World

Astronomers have detected an atmosphere around a rocky planet in another star's habitable zone for the very first time. It’s a milestone that brings us a step closer to answering whether life could exist beyond our Solar System. Predicted by a mathematical model before it was ever observed, and confirmed using a rare planetary alignment 48 light years away, this discovery does more than identify one intriguing world, it provides us with a whole new way to search for others like it.

NASA's Perseverance Rover Uncovers Evidence of 4 Billion Year Old Impacts

Old rocks exposed on the rim of Jezero Crater preserve a roughly 4-billion-year-old cosmic “weather report” from the solar system’s most dynamic era.

NASA’s Artemis III Lander Test Will be a "Dress Rehearsal" for Returning to the Moon!

Before Artemis astronauts land on the Moon’s surface in 2028, NASA will conduct the Artemis III demonstration mission in 2027, allowing teams on Earth and in orbit to practice rendezvous and docking operations between commercial human landing systems and the Orion spacecraft. Data from that mission, along with future uncrewed demonstration missions at the Moon,