Last weekend, another large piece of "space junk" tumbled to Earth, perhaps in Southeast Asia. Many people -- if they noted the event at all -- probably worried about being hit on the head, even though the odds are overwhelmingly against such a catastrophe (trillions to one).
Candy Torres drove nonstop for 21 hours to see the launch of space shuttle Challenger in June 1983. She had seen shuttle launches before, but this trip from Princeton, New Jersey, to Cape Canaveral, Florida, was different: Sally Ride was about to become the first female U.S. astronaut to leave the Earth's atmosphere.
Black holes may be featured in "Star Trek" and "Event Horizon," but they're not just the stuff of science fiction.
Motherboard.tv gets a close-up look at the largest telescope on Earth and meets the scientists behind it.
From a quiet swath of English countryside, some one and a half hours outside of London, researchers are receiving radio messages from the farthest reaches of the universe.
Geneva may have given the world precision watches, but its biggest contribution to humanity is a giant time machine.
Interstellar radio has lost one of its most avid listeners.
In the search for answers to some of the most mysterious and fundamental questions about the the universe, Europe's $10 billion particle-smashing Large Hadron Collider has been hogging the spotlight in recent years.
U.S. physicists may have found new particle or natural force. Science expert Bill Nye talks about what it all means.
While Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus at Christmas, atheists may wonder if there is another birth they might be able to commemorate.
Scientists have captured antimatter atoms for the first time, a breakthrough that could eventually help us to understand the nature and origins of the universe.
Attention, Earthlings: The sun is spewing plasma toward you, and the results could be beautiful.
X-rays of the sun show eruptions on the sun's surface, which are likely to trigger the northern lights. (No Audio)
A former astronaut and a NASA administrator recount the successful history of the Hubble Space Telescope.
For 20 years, it has circled quietly above us, capturing a dark, secret world billions of light years away.
Is the Large Hadron Collider being sabotaged from the future? Or merely by birds?
Does Antimatter really matter? And other burning questions
CNN's John Zarrella reports astronauts ready to perform final high wire repair to a famous telescope.
The space shuttle Atlantis blasted off successfully Monday afternoon on NASA's fifth and final repair visit to the Hubble Space Telescope.
On a recent episode of "South Park," Mr. Marsh steals a particle accelerator magnet so his son, Stan, can win the Pinewood Derby. The magnet's power results in an alien encounter, and chaos ensues.
A computer simulation illustrates what it would be like to fall into a black hole. Narrated by Andrew Hamilton.
Dare to fall into a black hole and you would get vaporized in what is probably the most violent place in the universe. But the journey would yield some amazing sights, though you might need three eyes for the best view of what's going on, new research suggests.
Deep underground on the border between France and Switzerland, the world's largest particle accelerator complex will explore the world on smaller scales than any human invention has explored before.
Groundbreaking science experiment recreates the Big Bang to unlock secrets of the universe. CNN's Atika Shubert reports.
Visiting a particle accelerator is like a religious experience, at least for Nima Arkani-Hamed.
Hanny van Arkel was poring over photos of galaxies on the Internet in August 2007 when she stumbled across a strange object in the night sky: a bright, gaseous mass with a gaping hole in its middle.
German astronomers say they have discovered conclusive proof of a supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy.
Miles O'Brien explores the possibility of intelligent life beyond Earth.
From a remote valley in Northern California, Jill Tarter is listening to the universe.
Cosmologist Stephen Hawking will retire from his prestigious post at Cambridge University next year, but intends to continue his exploration of time and space
CNN's Becky Anderson holds an exclusive interview with scientist Stephen Hawking on his views of the world.
A meteor, or shooting star, is usually the size of a pebble, or even a grain of sand, burning up in the atmosphere.
Nine days after the successful test run of the world's largest particle accelerator in Geneva, the machine has been shut down for repairs
CNN's Becky Anderson goes inside the tunnels of the biggest scientific experiment ever attempted.
Scientists Wednesday applauded as one of the most ambitious experiments ever conceived got successfully underway, with protons being fired around a 27-kilometer (17-mile) tunnel deep beneath the border of France and Switzerland in an attempt to unlock the secrets of the universe.
Scientists are dismissing critics who warn that the Large Hadron Collider could create Earth-swallowing black holes
A team of European scientists unveiled on Wednesday a new method for extracting images hidden under old masters' paintings, recreating a color portrait of a woman's face unseen since Vincent van Gogh painted over it in 1887
The US gamma-ray telescope GLAST was launched into space Wednesday on a Delta 2 missile from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Three prizes worth $1 million apiece were awarded Wednesday to seven
scientists for their discoveries in neuroscience, astrophysics and the
study of vanishingly small structures
Science seranade
updated: Wed May 21 2008 09:15:00
Dr. Alan Marscher of Boston University performs his song 'Superluminal Lover' at a conference in Miami in 2005.
"Attracted by your gravity, your body's so compact / Pulling me inward, prepare for close contact," Boston University astronomer Alan Marscher sings in his song about a deep-space object known as a black hole.
Hundreds of demonstrators in Islamabad gathered to protest the reprinting of a cartoon in a Danish newspaper.
If you know a secret the rest of the world doesn't, it can drive you nuts. From dealing with little white lies to exposing a sexual harasser, consider how, when -- and when not -- to let the cat out of the bag.
Every year, doctors write approximately 65 million prescriptions for drugs not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the federal agency that regulates prescription drugs.
Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe. That's got them scratching their heads about what's just not there.
Scientists have just released images of the brightest stellar explosion recorded.
Streams of glittering stellar gems on the outer edges of Andromeda are remnants of an ancient galactic collision that helped shape the spiral galaxy.
The discovery of three distant supermassive black holes in proximity to one another is giving astronomers a glimpse into the chaotic early years of the universe.
Astronomers might have seen the very first stars in the universe. If so, these are incredible stars, some 1,000 times as massive as the sun.
A new type of robot -- a small spherical microbot, able to hop, bounce and roll - is being developed that could literally provide a great leap forward in robotic exploration of our solar system's planets and moons.
Instead of being perfectly round like a globe, the universe might be a bit stretched in shape like a pill.
A new telescope will give astronomers their most detailed view ever of the universe, enabling them to see back in time almost to the "Big Bang."
New observations of a great big cosmic collision provide the best evidence yet that invisible and mysterious dark matter really does exist.
When the world's biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, opens next year near Geneva, the focal point of the high-energy physics world will shift from U.S. soil for the first time in half a century. But America's brightest are busy devising a rescue plan.
A project aiming to create an easier way to measure cosmic distances has instead turned up surprising evidence that our large and ancient universe may be even bigger and older than previously thought.
In February, a faint star a few thousand light-years away flared suddenly, beaming so brightly that for a few days it was visible to the naked eye.
Until recently, black holes have remained hidden beneath invisibility cloaks. Whereas a lot has been known about the existence and properties of black holes from Einstein's theory of general relativity, tangible evidence has been a recent phenomenon.
A new study finds that supermassive black holes, located at the heart of some galaxies, are the most fuel efficient engines in the universe.
Two supermassive black holes have been found to be spiraling toward a merger, astronomers said today.
Giant clouds of gas and dust harboring embryonic stars rise majestically into space in a new picture from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
What is the universe made of? According to a new list, it is one of the most important questions of our time -- and we could conceivably know the answer in the foreseeable future.
New research suggests evidence of dark energy in our cosmic backyard, but theorists are still divided on explanations for the ever-increasing speed with which the universe is expanding.
Astronomers have discovered an invisible galaxy that could be the first of many that will help unravel one of the universe's greatest mysteries.
A huge explosion halfway across the galaxy packed so much power it briefly altered Earth's upper atmosphere in December, astronomers said Friday.
U.S. and European researchers are lauding the effectiveness of a network of ground-based telescopes that has apparently salvaged a wind experiment feared lost during a mission to the surface of Saturn's moon Titan.
If a magnetar flew past Earth within 100,000 miles, the intense magnetic field of the exotic object would destroy the data on every credit card on the planet.
If you're light, it's fairly easy to travel at your own speed -- that is to say 186,282 miles per second or 299,800 kilometers per second.
The largest explosion ever seen in space reveals black holes to be more influential than expected, perhaps sometimes stifling star formation in a galaxy while gobbling up trillions upon trillions of tons of gas.
Incredibly massive black holes had fully matured just a billion years after the birth of the universe, according to two separate studies.
Earth's spin warps space around the planet, according to a new study that confirms a key prediction of Einstein's general theory of relativity.
Astronomers have found what they are calling the perfect cosmic storm, a galaxy cluster pile-up so powerful its energy output is second only to the Big Bang.
Startled astronomers peered through an apparent crack in the expanding bubble from an exploded star to glimpse what may be the youngest black hole ever detected.
Astronomers have found what appears to be a black hole 25 to 40 times the mass of our sun, a weight class not previously known to exist.
European researchers have found 30 previously hidden supermassive black holes anchoring faraway galaxies, which suggests there at least twice as many of the colossal gravity wells as thought.
As galaxies go, Andromeda IX is a mighty dim bulb.
The Chandra Space Telescope has gathered further evidence the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, scientists at NASA and Britain's Institute of Astronomy announced Tuesday. The finding sheds new light on a force known as "dark energy."
For more than a quarter century, researcher Jill Tarter has sought to solve a mystery that has long intrigued scientists and science-fiction buffs: Are we alone in the universe?
Fantastic collisions between two massive stars huddled in a cluster could fuel a series of mergers creating a black hole known as a middleweight.
A new survey of stars near the sun reveals a wild and crazy past in which wanderers arrived from all directions under the gravitational influences of black holes, clouds of gas and invading galaxies.
Using a new technique astronomers have found 10 apparent black holes near the center of the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest large spiral galaxy to our own.
Black holes may not be the smooth, featureless gravitational gluttons long thought to completely devour any matter or information that strays too close.
Scientists have obtained a rare glimpse of the chaotic environment just miles from the surface of an explosive corpse of a star that is slowly consuming its companion.
Black holes will eat just about anything, and now astronomers have confirmed that stars are on their menus.
An Australian-led team of scientists has discovered a new string of galaxies which they say challenges existing theories about the evolution of the universe.
Given the steady drumbeat of bad news coming out of Japan these days, you might expect to hear a lot of voices crying for radical change. Instead what you all too often get are arguments for the st...
Ever since modern manufacturing began in the 19th century, the biggest delaying factor in getting new products to market has been the industrial counterpart of astronomy's black hole--the so-called...
WHEN AT&T was broken up on January 1, 1984, admirers of Ma Bell's deep commitment to research wondered about the fate of AT&T Bell Laboratories -- the great American invention factory. Bell Labs ha...
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