Tag Archives: space

A New Map of the Universe, Painted With Cosmic Neutrinos

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Of the 100 trillion neutrinos that pass through you every second, most come from the sun or Earth’s atmosphere. But a smattering of the particles—those moving much faster than the rest—traveled here from powerful sources farther away. For decades, astrophysicists …

Read More »

SpaceX Must Fix 63 Issues Before Its Starship Can Fly Again

As the dust settled following SpaceX’s brief, explosive test launch of Starship in April, both the company and the Federal Aviation Administration dug into investigating the aftermath. The gigantic rocket’s flight lasted just four minutes before it blew up near SpaceX’s Boca Chica launch site on the Texas coast. Images …

Read More »

The Space Force Is Launching Its Own Swarm of Tiny Satellites

Four years after it was formed, the US Space Force has begun deploying its first satellite network. For the military, it marks a significant shift from relying on a handful of powerful, expensive satellites to a swarm of smaller, cheaper ones. From the Pentagon’s perspective, they’ll be a harder target …

Read More »

A New Idea for How to Assemble Life

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Life on other worlds—if it exists—might be so alien as to be unrecognizable. There’s no guarantee that alien biology would use the same chemistries as on Earth, with familiar building blocks such as DNA and proteins. Scientists might even spot …

Read More »