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Where did the comet 3I/Atlas come from?
It was not born in our solar system. Instead, the comet came from the stars: it is passing through our system of planets at high speed, moving so fast that although the Sun…
The way NASA tells it, Space Reactor Freedom sounds simple.
This reactor, of course, is a nuclear one. NASA has apparently obtained one,…
After travelling further into space than any human before them, the crew of Artemis II returned safely to Earth on April 10th.
Their voyage lasted ten days, and covered a distance of almost seven hundred thousand miles.…
In March, a chunk of rock and metal appeared over Lake Erie, flew at supersonic speed over northern Ohio, and then blew up in a deafening explosion. Over the next week, at least four other fireballs appeared over North America:…
For the first time in half a century, humans have flown over the surface of the Moon.
The moment of closest approach came on Monday evening. After flying for six days, the Orion…
In the 1860s, the American Civil War cut off the supply of cotton to the textile mills of New England. The solution, Étienne Léopold Trouvelot thought, might be found in moths. With the right kind he could produce silk, and with this he could alleviate the shortage.
Unfortunately, the American…
The hottest stars are blue. These are the beasts of the galaxy, massive stars that can be seen from incredible distance. But they do not live…
Giant stars are supposed to die in big and dramatic explosions. They run short on fuel, their cores collapse under immense gravitational pressure, and then they blow up. In 2023, we saw this happen in the nearby Pinwheel Galaxy: the star, probably a red supergiant akin to Betelgeuse, exploded…
Of all the known stars, WOH G64 is surely one of the most extreme. It is enormous. Were it placed at the centre of the solar system, it would consume all the planets out to the…
America’s billionaires are suddenly obsessed with the idea of building data centres in orbit. Elon Musk has, as usual, taken the lead. In the past month…
Curated space news and links. Weekly, brief, and technical.