
We just sent a message to try to talk to aliens on another world
16 November 2017
We've just sent a message to a nearby star to see if there's any life there - and we'll only have to wait 25 years for a reply

16 November 2017
We've just sent a message to a nearby star to see if there's any life there - and we'll only have to wait 25 years for a reply

15 November 2017
Pluto is far from the sun, so astronomers expect its atmosphere to be cold, but it's colder than predicted. Now we know that soot sends the sun’s heat back into space

15 November 2017
A newly discovered nearby world is probably close in size and temperature to Earth. This exoplanet might be able to host life because of its unusually calm star

25 October 2017
NASA has extended the mission of the Dawn probe around the icy dwarf planet Ceres. It will dip toward Ceres's surface and study its tenuous atmosphere

20 October 2017
Something strange is happening on dwarf planets Eris and Makemake. They’re tiny and cold, but they still show surprising signs of geologic activity, like real planets

11 October 2017
The tiny world Haumea has a ring, the most distant we’ve found in our solar system. This may mean rings encircle other far-off worlds in the solar system

2 October 2017
The dwarf planet Ceres is dappled with mysterious bright splotches. Their make-up varies with location, but they may all come from the same process

13 September 2017
Pluto's features named, coral's historical decline, animal's evolutionary head start, and more
12 September 2017
Besides Cassini, eight missions have passed the asteroid belt – and several are still broadcasting from the furthest solar system and beyond

23 August 2017
My 8-year-old son is very worried about Earth being destroyed by the sun when it becomes a red giant billions of years from now. I have tried to comfort him by suggesting we could shift Earth's orbit by hurling asteroids towards the planet on trajectories...