Asteroids

About 5 and a 1/2 years from now, astronomers predict, an asteroid about as wide as the Empire State Building is tall will streak through space within 20,000 miles (32,200 kms) of Earth, the…

Billions of years ago, in the giant disk of dust, gas, and rocky material that orbited our young sun, larger and larger bodies coalesced to eventually give rise to the planets, moons, and…

Magnetotactic bacteria, which can align with the Earth's magnetic field, have been discovered in a new location. Previously observed on land and in shallow water, analysis of a hydrothermal…

Scientists have taken a journey back in time to unlock the mysteries of Earth's early history, using tiny mineral crystals called zircons to study plate tectonics billions of years ago. The…

Sodium chloride, better known as table salt, isn't exactly the type of mineral that captures the imagination of scientists. However, a smattering of tiny salt crystals discovered in a sample…

The star Fomalhaut is ready for its close-up. Rings of dust encircle the young star in stunning new images from the James Webb Space Telescope. The photos offer a clearer view…

Our solar system formed from a molecular cloud, which was composed of gas and dust that was emitted into the interstellar medium (ISM), a vast space between stars. On collapse of the…

In 2017, a mysterious comet dubbed 'Oumuamua fired the imaginations of scientists and the public alike. It was the first known visitor from outside our solar system, it had no bright coma or…

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), two teams of astronomers have observed the aftermath of the collision between NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft and the…

Water makes up 71% of Earth's surface, but no one knows how or when such massive quantities of water arrived on Earth. A new study published in the journal Nature brings scientists one step…