The James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope is the most powerful space observatory ever built, launched in 2021 as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.…
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Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan (1934 to 1996) was an American astronomer and science communicator who did more than almost anyone to bring the wonder of the cosmos to…
The Wow! Signal
The Wow! signal was a strong, unexplained radio signal detected in 1977 by a telescope scanning the sky for possible messages from other…
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei (1564 to 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist, and engineer, often called the father of modern science. By insisting on…
Gravitational Lensing
Gravitational lensing is the bending of light from distant objects by the gravity of massive bodies that lie in between, which can magnify and…
The Cosmic Microwave Background
The cosmic microwave background is a faint glow of microwave radiation that fills all of space, the leftover heat from the early universe. Its…
Exoplanets
Exoplanets are planets that orbit stars other than our Sun. For centuries their existence was only speculation; today thousands have been confirmed,…
The Drake Equation
The Drake equation is a famous formula that estimates how many communicating alien civilizations might exist in our galaxy. It is less a precise…
Stellar Evolution
Stellar evolution is the scientific account of how stars are born, live, and die over millions or billions of years. Though no one can watch a single…
The Steady State Theory
The steady state theory was a model of the universe, popular in the mid twentieth century, which held that the universe has always looked roughly the…
The Expansion of the Universe
The universe is expanding: the galaxies are, on average, moving apart, and the space between them is stretching. Once a startling discovery, the…
The Telescope
The telescope is an instrument that gathers and focuses light to make distant objects appear closer and clearer. Its invention transformed astronomy,…
Astrology
Astrology is the belief that the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars influence human affairs and personalities, and that they can be used…
How the Universe Will End
The ultimate fate of the universe is one of the deepest questions in science. Cosmologists have proposed several very different endings, and which…
The Origin of the Moon
How the Moon came to be is a question that has fascinated and divided scientists for generations. While one explanation is now favoured, important…
Heliocentrism
Heliocentrism is the understanding that the Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun, rather than the Sun and everything else orbiting the Earth.…
Flat Earth
The idea that the Earth is flat is a debunked belief that the planet is a disc or a plane rather than a sphere. It has been contradicted by…
The Northern Lights
The northern lights, known scientifically as the aurora borealis, are one of nature's most spectacular displays. Shimmering curtains of green, pink,…
Apollo 11
Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that first landed humans on the Moon. On July 20, 1969, the American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked…
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in the Solar System, famous above all for its magnificent rings. A giant ball of gas…
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