I first wrote this after a recent particularly silly story about Nibiru, published in the Daily Telegraph: The end of the world now predicted for December say doomsday groups: "Terrifying stuff…

In the film version of "The Martian", the main character is trapped on the red planet and is forced to figure out how to grow food. He declares he is going to "science the s--t out of" the issue…

Science fiction stories often suggest that ETs, and our future selves also, would be expansionist, colonizing the galaxy, taking over worlds, and so forth. It's natural enough, because we are…

Sorry, I accidentally made two copies of this article with different titles. And both have comments, so not sure what to do. Unless you want to read the comments here, please visit the newer copy,…

Jupiter's moon Europa is believed to possess a large salty ocean beneath its icy exterior, and that ocean, scientists say, has the potential to harbor life. Indeed, a mission recently suggested by…

Scientists have predicted a new phase of superionic ice, a special form of ice that could exist on Uranus and Neptune, thanks to a computer solution performed by a team of researchers at Princeton…

Durable crystals called zircons are used to date some of the earliest and most dramatic cataclysms of the solar system. One is the super-duty collision that ejected material from Earth to form the…

Can an astronaut throw a ball to the Earth? The answer is Yes, and No. Depends what you mean by hitting the Earth. First, if you throw a ball towards the Earth - yes it's traveling that way…

Within modern cosmology, the Big Bang marks the beginning of the universe and the creation of matter, space and time about 13.8 billion years ago. Since then, the visible structures of the cosmos…

The Death Star of the movie Star Wars may be fictional, but planetary destruction is real. Astronomers announced today that they have spotted a large, rocky object disintegrating in its death spiral…