Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Colorful weather in parts of the United States, including northern and upper Midwestern states from New York to Idaho, due to a solar storm that could affect Earth, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric… Read More »
All systems are ready “to go” for a second attempt to launch Boeing’s oft-delayed Starliner crew ship for a long-awaited test flight to the International Space Station, NASA administrators said Friday. “From a station standpoint, from a crew standpoint, from a ground crew standpoint, we’re ready to fly this mission,” said Dana Weigel, manager of… Read More »
The 2020s have already seen many Moon landing attempts, although many have crashed or rolled over. With all the excitement surrounding the possibility of humans returning to the Moon, both commercial interests and scientists stand to gain. The Moon is perfectly suited for researchers to build telescopes they cannot place on Earth; because the Moon… Read More »
The search for tiny black holes, missing from the Big Bang, may be about to heat up. Just as the trail of such tiny black holes appears to have cooled, an international team of scientists has found clues in quantum physics that could reopen the case. One reason why the hunt for these so-called primordial… Read More »
More than 100 years ago, Alexander Graham Bell asked National Geographic readers to do something bold and fresh: “find a new science.” He pointed out that sciences based on the measurement of sound and light already exist. But there was no science of smell. Bell asked his readers to “measure a smell.” The smartphones in… Read More »
The 2020s have already seen many Moon landing attempts, although many have crashed or rolled over. With all the excitement surrounding the possibility of humans returning to the Moon, both commercial interests and scientists stand to gain. The Moon is perfectly suited for researchers to build telescopes they cannot place on Earth; because the Moon… Read More »
Researchers have discovered that elusive intermediate-mass black holes can form in dense star clusters containing tens of thousands to millions of tightly packed stars, called “globular clusters.” An intermediate-mass black hole has a mass between 100 and 10,000 suns. They are heavier than solar-mass black holes, which have masses between 10 and 100 solar masses,… Read More »
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has discovered not one but two of the oldest and most distant galaxies ever seen, and continues to break previous records. The most distant galaxy, JADES-GS-z14-0, appears to exist approximately 300 million years after the Big Bang and at least 100 million years before the previous record holder. This… Read More »
Spaceflight doesn’t usually come to mind when thinking of the serene, lush mountains of North Carolina. It’s true that in the early 1960s, NASA built the (now defunct) Rosman Satellite Tracking and Data Acquisition Facility among the rolling hills of Appalachia to track Soviet satellites and relay communications for the Gemini and Apollo programs. And… Read More »
If you have a telescope, you might consider setting your alarm for around 4 a.m. local daylight time (3 a.m. if you live in Hawaii, Arizona, or Puerto Rico, which does not observe daylight hours) on Friday, May 31. If you go outside at that time and look east-southeast, you’ll probably see the two most… Read More »