Space

Exotic, dark astrophysical objects may be hiding in interstellar space, and a new proposal outlines how to find them: stare really, really hard. We don’t know what dark matter is, even though we strongly suspect it exists. We see circumstantial evidence for it everywhere, from the rotation rates of galaxies to the growth of the largest structures in the cosmos. For decades, cosmologists have…

This year, the number of NASA-tracked confirmed worlds discovered beyond our solar system surpassed 6,000, and several thousand more await confirmation. The milestone, reached just three decades after the Nobel Prize-winning discovery of the first planet orbiting a sunlike star in 1995, is largely the result of the planet-hunting power of NASA’s Kepler space telescope and Transiting…

They may not be home for Christmas, but astronauts in space are finding their own way to make the season bright. They’ve even hung their space stockings by the airlock with care. Four astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are sending their best Christmas wishes to Earth as they orbit our planet. NASA astronauts Mike Fincke, Zena Cardman and Chris Williams and Kimiya Yui of the…

Far from shipping lanes, cities, and even most scientific outposts lie the South Sandwich Islands, one of the most remote island chains on Earth. Stretching in a slender arc through the stormy South Atlantic Ocean, these islands sit more than 994 miles (1,600 kilometers) from both South America and Antarctica. In this satellite image, puffs of low-level cloud drift across Vindication and Candlemas…