Astronomy

Inside the hunt for habitable planets.

Bright ideas from astronomy’s biggest stars haven’t always worked out.

What a missing element can teach us about the universe.

The importance of feeling small and insignificant.

Recent controversies bode ill for the effort to detect life on other planets by analyzing the gases in their atmospheres.

Asteroid defense gets serious.

A controversial theory can explain phenomena attributed to the mystery planet.

Cassiopeia A gets a close-up.

Terraforming Mars could risk exterminating the very lifeforms we dream of discovering.

The author on writing her book, Our Moon, about the power of our satellite to guide evolution and human curiosity.

Did a colossal collision with a doomed planet give us our satellite?

What a trippy gravitational phenomenon can tell us about the universe.