“Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links.” Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Despite its spectacular birth, the universe will mostly likely eventually fade into nothingness with very little drama. Black holes, as far as we know, will evaporate through Hawking radiation, with one
From changing size, to crushed immune systems and childbirth complications, humanity colonizing Mars could come with a host of problems for the human body. Elon Musk believes Mars settlement is possible by 2050, but there are considerable challenges and questions that still need to be answered before a permanent presence on the planet can be
A robotic submersible operating beneath one of Antarctica’s most closely monitored ice shelves vanished in January 2024 during a scheduled mission. The vehicle, part of a long-running international effort to understand ice shelf dynamics and their link to rising sea levels, had previously delivered the most detailed subglacial maps ever recorded in the region. The
Across Brazil and parts of Argentina, scientists have discovered dozens of strange tunnels dug deep into the earth. The largest of these tunnels are 2m high, 4m wide, and stretch for more than a kilometre, but none were dug by human hands. Instead, scientists think these tunnels are ‘palaeoburrows’ carved out by some of the
Early 2026 has brought renewed scrutiny to how Earth-observing satellites register extreme ocean events. Widely circulated reports have pointed to satellite detections of unusually large Pacific Ocean waves, creating uncertainty about whether the observations reflect new hazards or improved measurement capability. At the center of the attention is a single satellite mission whose measurements intersected
Humanity has worked itself into a position where we can detect a single high-energy particle from space and wonder where in nature it came from. Billions of people likely don’t care at all about such matters, but for those who are naturally curious and are fortunate enough to have the time to indulge their curiosity,
New observations reveal that WOH G64, once assumed to be nearing a supernova, is still a red supergiant and may have been misdiagnosed all along. This enormous star, about 1,500 times the width of the Sun and up to 282,000 times brighter, is one of the largest ever observed. It lies approximately 163,000 light-years from
Mars, once a much wetter and more dynamic planet, is now a dry and inhospitable desert. The mystery of how the red planet lost its water has fascinated scientists for decades. A groundbreaking study published in Communications Earth & Environment on February 2, 2026, has brought us a significant step closer to understanding this enigma.
In May 2023, a team of researchers aboard the JOIDES Resolution drilled 1,268 meters into the Earth’s crust, reaching mantle-altered rock closer than ever before. Working just south of the Lost City hydrothermal field in the Atlantic Ocean, the scientists extracted a core of abyssal peridotite, marking the deepest successful mantle sampling mission to date.
SpaceX works on the crew access arm at Launch Complex 39A on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now It’s the end of an era as SpaceX transitions all of its planned Dragon flights from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space