Paul M. Sutter

Invisible vacuum energy is all around us. We could use it to power propulsion, enhance nanostructures, and build levitating devices.

Despite controversies last year, scientists are still pursuing LK-99 as a potential a room-temperature superconducting material, because it would allow us to conduct electricity without any loss of energy.

The discovery of aliens visiting Earth would be thrilling, but proving it hinges on finding solid evidence.

Following in the footsteps of the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s next super telescope in space would be the first specifically designed to search for signs of life on planets orbiting other stars.

Master of fusion, our home star’s sunquakes could reveal vital information for making our own sustainable energy source.

From gamma ray bursts that are implicated in mass extinction events to hostile aliens, here’s a rundown of the most significant cosmic threats to Earthly life in order of probability.

From seeing further back in spacetime than ever before, to revealing breathtaking sights in our our own solar system, this unprecedented telescope is changing our understanding of the universe.

Fungus-driven Martian habitats? They could become reality. So could a space telescope with liquid mirrors. Here’s how avant-garde ideas—like the Mars helicopter—take shape.

Life on Earth will never be the same again. We’ll have fewer aquatic tides, a lengthening day, no more seasons, and no more stunning total solar eclipses. But watch out for more asteroid impacts.

In the messy moments following the Big Bang, time as we understand it was born. So were all the other forces that govern our universe.

Scientists want to explore, so they’re sending two missions to probe Venus’ poison clouds and map its burning surface.

You won’t be around to see the ending, but just reading about it will give you chills.

We’re learning more about it with tools like the Parker Solar Probe, which is on a daredevil mission to swim right through the sun’s corona.

A cosmologist explains how some especially dense neutron stars may actually be created of free-floating strange quarks.

These theoretical particles ignore the basic structure of cause and effect. If scientists ever prove they’re real, tachyons would shatter our understanding of reality.

The universe is so unimaginably vast that even radio communications will break down before we can find each other.

A cosmologist explains the mind-bending hypothesis that our universe could have branched off from a black hole singularity in another universe.

In the depths of interplanetary space, it’s not the unimaginable cold that kills. It’s everything else.

This holographic concept could explain a mystery about black holes, but the math may not represent reality.

While we can’t directly observe the Cosmic Dawn, our radio telescope arrays reach the darkest regions of space and may eventually detect the earliest light.

The emptiness between stars and galaxies makes up 80 percent of the volume of the known universe. Dark energy is expanding these voids rapidly.

We won’t do it alone. Robotic assistants will be our companions and aids to discovery, revealing places we otherwise may never go.

If you could take a spin through the solar system, these are the sights you shouldn’t miss—including the possibility of life on an ocean moon.

When it comes to nature’s brightest explosions, nothing can match a supernova.

It could be the result of out-of-control rapid expansion that causes patches of universe to branch off and make their own worlds.

Heat, temperature, energy, and work. Here is how they all relate to one another, and govern the functioning of everything from steam engines to snowflakes.

Roughly 1 trillion years from now, the last star will be born. In about 100 trillion years, the last light will go out.

This mysterious force will stretch the cosmos so much that one day no one will see stars.

But it is our modern understanding of the history and evolution of the universe, a cosmologist explains.