The world's largest neutrino detector has just begun operations in Jiangmen, China. 🧪🔭 english.cas.cn/newsroom/cas...

Ten years ago @ligo.org detected gravitational waves for the first time. I visited LIGO to retrace this historic discovery, which changed not only our understanding of the universe, but our understanding of perception itself. My latest column: 🧪🔭 invisibleuniverse.substack.com/p/the-day-we...

This is amazing: A direct image of the shadow of a black hole. A direct image of the hot, swirling gas circling and falling into it. And brand-new images showing an apparent magnetic flip around the black hole, a sign of turbulent, tumultuous changes. 🧪🔭 eventhorizontelescope.org/new-eht-imag...

The largest optical telescope in the world is taking shape on Cerro Armazones in Chile. Photographer Boris Häußler set up carefully timed shots to capture the Extremely Large Telescope (its real name!) silhouetted in front of the Sun & Moon at various milestones. 🧪🔭 www.eso.org/public/image...

Cassini's final full view of Saturn 🪐 a mosaic comprising 11 color-composites captured by the spacecraft in visible light filters on September 13, 2017. The following day it dove into Saturn's atmosphere, ending its mission after 13 years in orbit.

An intriguing study of Earth-size planet Trappist-1e was overshadowed this week by Mars news (and...other things). Most Earth-size planets in our galaxy orbit red dwarf stars. Trappist-1e offers our best chance to learn whether such planets can support life. 🧪🔭 science.nasa.gov/missions/web...

In another part of the world, people doggedly pursue beauty, knowledge & a deeper connection to the universe: A short thread. A new study of the Butterfly Nebula shows it blowing out mineral crystals & carbon molecules--the raw material for future Earthlike planets. 🧪🔭 ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

What good is a nuclear reactor on the Moon? It could be about much more than sabre-rattling. A lunar power plant could enable exciting science, technology & exploration experiments...if pursued strategically. My latest Invisible Universe column: 🧪🔭 invisibleuniverse.substack.com/p/what-good-...

Possible chemical signature of life found on Mars? These claims are hugely exciting--and, as always, complex and somewhat ambiguous. The NASA press conference is still going, but the news coverage is already coming out: 🧪🔭 www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

Gamma-ray bursts are the most powerful explosions in the universe. They're probably caused by supernovas or colliding neutron stars, one-off events... Except for this bizarre new burst that popped off three times in the same day, defying explanation. WTF, universe? 🧪🔭 www.eso.org/public/news/...

Astronomers may have found a giant blob of dark matter, 10 million times the mass of the Sun, hidden right in front of us within the Milky Way. This is a very tentative detection, but if confirmed it could provide big clues about where & what dark matter is. 🧪🔭 www.science.org/content/arti...

A new image of interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS yielded some serendipitous art. The Gemini South telescope observed the comet through four color filters. While tracking its motion, the telescope split the light from surrounding (unmoving) stars into little rainbows. 🔭🧪 noirlab.edu/public/image...

This new JWST image is one of the most spectacular yet from the space telescope. Giant, newborn stars here are carving away surrounding gas & dust. The bright pair at center is two of the most massive stars known. The dark spire is 50 trillion kilometers tall! 🧪🔭 webbtelescope.org/contents/new...

If our elected leaders truly believe we're in a new space race with China, then we cannot afford to abandon space science. Read the NEW OP-ED by me and Maxwell Zhu today in Payload Space: payloadspace.com/op-ed-space-...

Warped light makes it possible to measure the black hole at the center of this galaxy, known as the Cosmic Horseshoe. It's a monster, 36 billion times as massive as the Sun, possibly the biggest black hole known. Some cool astrophysics sleuthing here. 🧪🔭 ras.ac.uk/news-and-pre...

The giant star Betelgeuse appears to have a secret companion. We missed it before because it's only a little bigger than our Sun. And it's going fast: The companion star is likely to spiral in and be destroyed in about 10,000 years. 🧪🔭 noirlab.edu/public/news/...

NASA's SphereX space telescope was designed to map distant stars and galaxies. But it recently seized an opportunity to examine the new interstellar comet, 3I/ATLAS. Most of the time, we go out in search of the universe. Sometimes, the universe comes to us. 🧪🔭 science.nasa.gov/blogs/3iatla...

The NSF Inouye Solar Telescope just captured this extreme-resolution video of an X-Class flare (the nastiest kind) on the Sun. It's sped up by a factor of 100 so you can see the seething streamers of plasma. This scene is 4x as wide as the entire Earth. 🔭🧪 nso.edu/press-releas...

I'm looking away from our world for a moment. I'm looking at the little dot in this image. It's a newborn planet, 5 times the mass of Jupiter, carving a path through the disk of dust around its star. This is the first time we've seen the process clearly. 🧪🔭 www.eso.org/public/image...

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS is slowly giving up its secrets. New JWST observations give a great view of its lopsided, dusty coma & show unusually high levels of carbon dioxide billowing off its nucleus. These are clues about how it formed in a star system far away. 🔭🧪 arxiv.org/abs/2508.18209

Deep beneath your feet, two enormous blobs (technically known as BLOBs) sit at the top of Earth's core. They may be remnants of a protoplanet that collided with ours 4.5 billion years ago. New evidence suggests they're still linked to volcanic eruptions today. 🧪🔭 eos.org/articles/bla...

Last week I came across a remarkable archival document by astronomer William Herschel. He describes his telescopes as time machines, capable of "penetrating into time" as much as 1,910,000 years into the past. His numbers were off, but his insight was spot on. In the year 1800! 🧪🔭

In NYC? Join me tomorrow night at NYPL, where I'll be interviewing @lauriestories.bsky.social about her new book, "The Aviator and the Showman." We'll talk about Amelia Earhart, lost history, maybe even alien abductions...it should be a fun conversation. And free! www.showclix.com/event/theavi...

En route to the intriguing metallic asteroid Psyche, NASA's spacecraft of the same name looked back toward Earth... ...and got this view of our planet and its Moon as two tiny lights, floating in the great depths of space. 🔭🧪 www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-p...

Let's get this over with: Astronomers just found a new moon around Uranus. It's part of an unusual group of 14 mini satellites orbiting close to the planet, within the orbit of its 1st major moon, Miranda. They may relate to the planet's rings & sideways tilt. 🔭🧪 science.nasa.gov/blogs/webb/2...

Most planets in our galaxy orbit dim red stars. Can any of them support life? A new JWST study of planet TRAPPIST-1 d offers some clues. No sign of an Earthlike atmosphere, but its cooler neighbors look more promising. (So, alas, we're still at "maybe.") 🧪🔭 esawebb.org/news/weic2516/

15 years of radio observations yielded this amazing view down the throat of a black hole. We're looking into a jet of plasma shooting out from a supermassive black hole, called PKS 1424+240. The lines depict intense magnetic fields threaded through the jet. 🧪🔭 www.mpg.de/25171297/eye...

I just returned from vacation in France, where I discovered that the statues at Versailles are now AI-enhanced. You can say, "I find this creepy" and they will respond, "Fear not, weary traveler..." (At that point I turned it off.)

This striped formation may contain the oldest intact rocks on Earth.* A new study suggests that they are at least 4.16 billion years old--relics from a time before plate tectonics, probably before oceans, even. * The pocket knife is a more recent element. 🧪 www.sciencenews.org/article/eart...

In the dusty clouds of our galaxy, planet-size objects form on their own, like stars. And now it seems that these rogue worlds make their own moons, which form like planets. All cloaked in darkness. It's weird and exciting out there! 🔭🧪 news.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/gian...

The thing about this is, a HUUUUUGE amount of what NASA does is earth science. Most of the reason we are able to see Earth and what’s happening here is because of NASA. This would be like blinding us to our own planet.

This year's Perseid meteors have been obscured by light from a near-full Moon. Fortunately, there's more than one way to watch a meteor shower. The Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar tracks meteors by their radar-reflecting trails (current Perseids shown in pink). 🧪🔭 fireballs.ndc.nasa.gov/cmor-radiants/

Huge if true: New JWST observations may have detected primordial black holes in the extremely early universe. Before galaxies, before stars ... black holes may have generated the first light after the Big Bang. 🧪🔭 www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-...

Meet the earliest, most distant supermassive black hole ever seen. CAPERS-LRD-z9 is a puzzling "little red dot" galaxy. Its black hole had grown to ~50 million solar masses just 500 million years after the Big Bang--possibly forming from a dense cosmic "seed." 🧪🔭 aasnova.org/2025/08/06/d...

4,000 years ago, the star DFK 52 spit out a huge cloud of gas & dust--nearly as massive as our entire Sun. We don't know why, but we can see the result. This is a velocity image (blue toward us, red away) of the star, which is likely to explode soon as a supernova. 🧪🔭 www.eso.org/public/image...

After years of searching, astronomers have found strong evidence of a planet around Alpha Centauri, a near-twin of our Sun in the nearest neighboring star system. This would also be the closest exoplanet ever observed directly. 🧪🔭 webbtelescope.org/contents/new...

New studies of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS show that it's a lot smaller than those early estimates, which were really upper limits. Our interstellar visitor is no more than 5 km (3 miles) wide, probably smaller. Which makes sense--small objects are a lot more common than big ones. 🧪🔭

En route to Jupiter, NASA's Europa Clipper captured this ethereal thermal (infrared) image of Mars and its two tiny moons. We still don't know if they are captured asteroids, or the splattered remains of ancient impacts. 🔭🧪 photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA2...

A new analysis of >2000 supernovas bolsters the case that dark energy is even more puzzling that we thought. The universe-expanding energy seems to be slowly diminishing, saving us from a catastrophic "big rip." (Maybe) 🧪🔭 newscenter.lbl.gov/2025/07/21/s...

Astronomers are filling in the details of an intriguing planetary system around a nearby red dwarf star. L 98-59 has a likely lava-volcano world, ocean world, sub-Earth, and now a super-Earth in its (potential) habitable zone. nouvelles.umontreal.ca/en/article/2...

I see grifters are lining up (especially Over There) to milk money out of "that interstellar comet might be an alien spaceship." Here's the shocking secret: Comet 3I/ATLAS is a weird, fascinating, and (by all evidence) completely natural interstellar comet. 🧪🔭 skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-ne...

At an event celebrating the 100th anniversary of quantum mechanics, physicists were polled on their view of quantum theory. Their wildly divergent answers illustrate the difference between observation and interpretation. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

“Okay, Houston. As I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown at Hadley, I sort of realize there's a fundamental truth to our nature. Man must explore. And this is exploration at its greatest.” – David Scott #Apollo15 | July 30, 1971 contactlight.de

Extreme deep-sea organisms are closely related across the globe, indicating a previously unknown "superhighway" of migration via slow ocean currents. Our planet is connected in all kinds of surprising ways. 🧪 www.csiro.au/en/news/All/...

NASA's new PUNCH mission is a constellation of 4 small satellites that collectively provide an unprecedented view of giant eruptions breaking free from the Sun. This first-release video compresses about 6 days of observations. 🧪🔭 science.nasa.gov/blogs/punch/...

Lots of news just came out about strange, rhythmic goings-on in the outer regions of our solar system. An object called 2020 VN40 moves in sync with Neptune (1 orbit for every 10 of Neptune), suggesting a large population of bodies in similar resonances. 🧪🔭 www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/astrono...

A solar eclipse like no other: This is the first artificial solar eclipse created by two spacecraft flying in precise formation in orbit. The Proba-3 mission will be able to conduct precise studies of the Sun's corona & the process of powerful solar eruptions. 🧪🔭 www.esa.int/Enabling_Sup...

The very first step to making new planets is the formation of crystals of silicon monoxide. They stick together to build bigger & bigger things, until eventually planets emerge. And now we've witnessed that step--the moment when a new planetary system is born. 🧪🔭 www.eso.org/public/news/...

Best look yet at Comet 3I/ATLAS, the interstellar visiting that is currently racing through our solar system. It's currently 600 million kilometers from the Sun, between Jupiter & the asteroid belt. As it moves closer, the images will inevitably get better. 🧪🔭 noirlab.edu/public/news/...