Category Astronomy/Space

Earth will meet a similar fate in 5 billion years. As a star runs out of fuel, it will billow out to a million times its original size, engulfing any matter — and planets — in its wake...

When Edwin Hubble observed distant galaxies in the 1920s, he made the groundbreaking discovery that the universe is expanding. It was not until 1998, however, that scientists observing Type Ia supernovae further discovered that the universe is not just expanding but has begun a phase of accelerating expansion. “To explain this acceleration, we need a source,” says Joseph Mohr, astrophysicist at LMU...

The first building blocks of life on Earth may have formed thanks to eruptions from our sun, a new study finds.

A series of chemical experiments show how solar particles, colliding with gases in Earth’s early atmosphere, can form amino acids and carboxylic acids, the basic building blocks of proteins and organic life. The findings were published in the journal Life.

To understand the origins of life, many scientists try to explain how amino acids, the raw materials from which proteins and all cellular life, were formed...

GJ486b is about 30% larger than the Earth and three times as massive, which means it is a rocky world with stronger gravity than Earth. It orbits a red dwarf star in just under 1...