Parallax

Humans have been mapping the cosmos since the dawn of civilization, but modern technology has allowed scientists to build an entirely new kind of universal chart.

The universe is expanding—that much is certain. How quickly it’s expanding, though, is still up for debate.

Jupiter’s moon Europa creates enough oxygen every day to keep a million people breathing—but that’s less than researchers used to think.

The findings indicate that dwarf galaxies were likely responsible for kicking off the reionization of the universe.

The brightest object in the universe—or at least, the brightest we’ve seen yet—shines 500 trillion times brighter than the Sun, and it eats a Sun a day. 

The water covering more than 70% of the Earth’s surface came from somewhere, and debate swirls among scientists about that mysterious source.

Space makes a pretty good perch from which to study the Earth’s evolution over time. It’s a good enough vantage point that over the past 20 years, NASA has invested nearly a billion dollars into the development of a satellite that can help explain interactions between the ocean and atmosphere for vital climate change research.

With everything we learn about the nature of dark matter—that mysterious, unseeable substance that helps galaxies to form—there are a hundred new questions to answer.

To build lunar infrastructure that can support human life and stand the test of time is an engineering challenge for the ages, and it’s one that space agencies the world over are taking on with enthusiasm. The European Space Agency (ESA) is the latest to unveil a plan for what a long-term structure on the…

The concept that we could beam unlimited, concentrated solar energy from space down to Earth via microwaves has piqued the interest of scientists for decades. Until recently, though, space-based solar power was purely theoretical.

Despite the millennia humanity has spent looking up at the stars and pondering their existence, and despite all the fancy tools we’ve dreamed up and built to help clarify the cosmos, the precise process of star formation is still an enigma—let alone the details of the rest of the long, slow lifetime of any individual star.