Space

Detective work by a team of space-weather experts has discovered the truth about a historical event that had been thought to be the first-ever case of technological disruption by geomagnetic activity from the sun, but has now been shown to have taken place seven years later. From it being too hot or too wet to leaves on the track or cows on the line, there’s a fine tradition of what the…

On Sept. 15, 1968, the Soviet Union launched the Zond 5 spacecraft on a mission to loop around the moon and return to Earth. There were no cosmonauts aboard, but there were several smaller vertebrates — including the first two tortoises to ever go to space! Other passengers included wine flies, mealworms, plants and seeds. These were the first animals in deep space and the first to travel…

For more than a century, astronomers have been captivated by the idea that an undiscovered planet could be lurking in the furthest reaches of our solar system. The search for this elusive, hypothetical planet has taken many forms over the decades. The discovery of Neptune in 1846 demonstrated that an unseen planet might be inferred from its gravitational effects on other worlds. Based on this…