Stars

How Many Alien Civilizations Are Out There? A New Galactic Survey Holds a Clue

The Milky Way is full of habitable real estate, with roughly half of all sunlike stars hosting Earth-size worlds that could be friendly to life.

National Geographic

Galactic Archaeology

Examining the fossils of the first stars.

Science Node

Two Dozen Exoplanets That Might be More Habitable Than Earth

Do we need to change our search parameters when looking for extraterrestrial life?

Air & Space Magazine

Scientist Calculates the ‘Sad, Lonely’ End of the Universe

Stars will continue to explode long after the universe is cold and “dead,” one scientist determined in diving down the rabbit hole to find the last supernova that will ever happen.

Space.com

Collision of Galaxies May Have Spurred Our Solar System’s Formation

A violent event on a colossal scale — the crash of two galaxies — may have paved the way for our solar system’s birth.

Reuters

Deep in the Cosmic Forest, a Black Hole Goldilocks Might Like

Astronomers found an intermediate black hole — not too big, not too small — that sheds light on how the universe was assembled in the dark.

The New York Times

Star’s Strange Path Around Black Hole Proves Einstein Right — Again

Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity has aced another test.

Science

‘Radical Change’ Needed After Latest Neutron Star Collision

A recent neutron star merger has defied astronomers’ expectations, leading them to question longstanding ideas about neutron stars and the supernovas that create them.

Quanta Magazine

Harvard, Vanderbilt Scientists Find “Stellar Budget” for Colliding Stars

The study found that roughly 14 percent of stars collide after becoming black holes.

The Harvard Crimson

Oldest Material on Earth Discovered

Scientists analyzing a meteorite have discovered the oldest material known to exist on Earth. They found dust grains within the space rock — which fell to Earth in the 1960s — that are as much as 7.5 billion years old.

BBC News

LIGO and Virgo Probably Spotted the First Black Hole Swallowing Up a Neutron Star

Astronomers may have detected gravitational waves from a new type of event.

Science News

A Star Orbiting in the Extreme Gravity of a Black Hole Validates General Relativity

The star S0-2 gets so close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy that it can be used to test our fundamental understanding of gravity.

Smithsonian

Mystery Of Universe’s Expansion Deepens With New Cosmic Calculation

The question of how fast the universe is expanding just keeps getting more confusing.

New Scientist

Alternative Theory of Gravity Makes a Nearly Testable Prediction

A massive simulation done with a “chameleon” theory of gravity.

Ars Technica

Gravitational Waves, Nuclear Fire, Rocks and Love

A 5-billion-year-old detective story reveals two new players in our origins.

Scientific American

Gravitational Waves Hint at Detection of Black Hole Eating Star

LIGO and Virgo observatories have spotted ripples from what could be the first-ever detection of this long-sought event.

Nature

The Universe Seems to Be Expanding Faster Than All Expectations

New evidence deepens a mystery around the Hubble constant, one of the most important numbers in cosmology.

National Geographic

The M87 Black Hole Image Showed the Best Way to Measure Black Hole Masses

Its diameter suggests the black hole is 6.5 billion times the mass of the sun.

Science News

Black Holes and Neutron Stars: A Merger in Space

With Duncan Brown, Vicky Kalogera, Frans Pretorius, Jocelyn Read, and moderator Mario Livio.

World Science Festival

When Black Holes Burp, Stars Sense It

As a grad student, Priya Natarajan theorized that winds emanate from black holes, affecting nearby stars. Now, new evidence hints that she was right.

Science Friday

Where Are All the Aliens? Struggling and Hustling, Just Like Us

Conventional wisdom has it that aliens should be either everywhere, or nowhere. A new model suggests they can be both.

Popular Science