space

If there’s one constellation that even the most uninterested stargazer can identify it’s Orion, famous for his three-starred belt. Yet something is definitely up with the cosmic hunter as one of his most iconic stars has been dimming, leading to speculation that it could be about to go supernova. Betelgeuse is also known as Alpha Orionis, meaning that it is the brightest star in the constel

From finding the building blocks for life on Mars to breakthroughs in gene editing and the rise of artificial intelligence, here are six major scientific discoveries that shaped the 2010s - and what leading experts say could come next Are we alone? We don't yet know whether there was ever life on Mars - but thanks to a small, six-wheeled robot, we do know the Red Planet was habitable. Sho

Sometimes you just have to stand back in awe at the beauty of the Universe – and that's absolutely the case with this image from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which captures the side view of a spiral galaxy know as the Whale Galaxy. But if you look closer, the stunning picture also shows something else: the magnetic 'ropes' around the edges of the galaxy's disc. These fi

Something strange has been happening in eastern Colorado at night. Since the week of Christmas, giant drones measuring up to 6 feet (1.8 metres) across have been spotted in the sky at night, sometimes in swarms as large as 30. The Denver Post first reported these mysterious drone sightings in northeastern Colorado on December 23. Since then, sightings have spanned six counties across Colora

Before its circuits ran cold in the shadow of a Martian dust storm, Opportunity took one long look at its surroundings and saved it for posterity. The image represents a poignant conclusion to the rover's mission; a detailed panorama combining the most recent tracks of its marathon journey with a glimpse of the sands it would never touch. Forget the science for a moment. Just look at it.

The climate crisis is inherently a debate over what we feel entitled to have in order to live a decent life, and how we generate the energy we need to get all humans there. There's no doubt we're cooking our planet out of a desire to live our best lives, and most of us living in western countries need to cut back on our usage. But what's less clear is exactly how much wiggle room there is for r

Earlier this year, we celebrated a first in the field of quantum physics: scientists were able to 'teleport' a qutrit, or a piece of quantum information based on three states, opening up a whole host of new possibilities for quantum computing and communication. Up until then, quantum teleportation had only been managed with qubits, albeit over impressively long distances. This proof-of-concept

Traveling above Jupiter at more than 130,000 miles per hour, NASA’s $1 billion Juno probe took its ninth set of stunning flyby images on October 24. But the sun slipped between the giant planet and Earth for more than a week, blocking the spacecraft from beaming home its precious bounty of data. Now that the conjunction is over, however, new raw image data from Juno’s ninth perijove — as