Astronomy

Galaxies grow through mergers and collisions, and astronomers want to know more about the mergers in the Milky Way's past. But mergers can stir up the stars in the resulting galaxy, making it difficult to determine exactly when an ancient merger occurred. A new study led by researchers at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) and the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC) may have overcome that challenge.

NASA’s Psyche snapped images as it flew by Mars last week. The spacecraft used the planet’s gravity to give itself a boost on its journey toward its target asteroid

Years of grievance against dust. It ruins lungs, suits, rovers, and Mars missions. The first installment of an apology, sort of, to the most annoying substance in the cosmos.

When Richard Dawkins’s first blockbuster book was published half a century ago, few genes had ever been sequenced or studied in detail. Yet the book’s gene-centred view of evolution still has much to teach us in today’s genetic age

When Richard Dawkins’s first blockbuster book was published half a century ago, few genes had ever been sequenced or studied in detail. Yet the book’s gene-centred view of evolution still has much to teach us in today’s genetic age

Fifty years ago, a draft of Richard Dawkins’s first book landed on book editor Michael Rodgers’s desk – and life was never the same

Fifty years ago, a draft of Richard Dawkins’s first book landed on book editor Michael Rodgers’s desk – and life was never the same

Last year, The New Yorker revealed the late Sacks's "guilt" about his “falsification” in The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, but is this story about more than just the facts?

Last year, The New Yorker revealed the late Sacks's "guilt" about his “falsification” in The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, but is this story about more than just the facts?

Denver’s hockey team is studded with stars, but training and playing the game some 5,000 feet above sea level may give their athletic performance a boost over that of their rivals

The European Space Agency is expanding its growing fleet of Earth-observing science Scout missions with the selection of two new satellites: Hibidis and SOVA-S.

Chosen from four final competing concepts, these missions will tackle very different but equally pressing scientific questions – from biodiversity below forest canopies to the effects of atmospheric gravity waves high above Earth.

For most of human history, the sky was not something we studied — it was something we lived with.

The post Stonehenge and the Geometry of the Sky appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Nuclear power could enable long-term lunar missions, but NASA’s timeline may be too ambitious

Some extinct human ancestors and modern-day apes appear to share wrist traits that raise the question of whether our last common ancestor walked on its knuckles

Five different groups of predatory dinosaurs independently evolved disproportionately small arms, and it seems they did so because their heads became so large and powerful

Five different groups of predatory dinosaurs independently evolved disproportionately small arms, and it seems they did so because their heads became so large and powerful

In the closing decades of the 20th century, several proposed explanations were put forward for why humanity has not yet found evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence in the cosmos.

A Bermuda high parked over the western Atlantic is pulling sweltering air up from the south, challenging records in parts of the eastern U.S.

March was a scorching 9.35 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the 20th-century average for the month, capping the hottest 12-month stretch for the U.S. since records began in 1895