31 posts
YouTube user Daveachuk has created a late-night, where-do-I-fit-in-the-universe, pondering-life-late-at-night video from over 400,000 photos as well as data taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The resulting video is almost mesmerizing and
Back in 2006 the New Horizon space probe left Earth on mission to visit Pluto. On July 14th of this year, New Horizon will finally reach its destination and give us a closer look at the piece of rock that was once on the a-list of planets i
In a move only he could’ve seen coming…you know….because he’s who he is…the Amazing Kreskin has opened the gates on a new dating site… A site for “enthusiasts of the paranormal, the unexplained, the mystical, the implausible…” While we’re p
The jury’s out on what’s causing the sound (which is far, far below the level of human hearing) and a whole lot of theories are being tossed around about it. Everything from magnetic fields to ionization of particles shearing themselves fro
Like found footage from an unannounced JJ Abrams flick, video is slamming YouTube from all over Russia about a large meteor that hit the atmosphere. Details are still coming in about the event and we’ll have a fuller piece about it later. F
December 21st of this year is the big party date for the supposed end of our world. Sure everyone’s already ordering kegs, ordering faux “Danger: Apocalypse In Progress – Do Not Cross” banner tape by the case and prepping for their end-of-t
Centuries ago, in AD 774, some guy in Britain is keeping a written record of life’s goings-on. In that year he mentions witnessing something strange…a weird “red crucifix” hanging in the sky. Fling yourself forward in time. Researchers are
The Kepler telescope has spotted two Earth-sized planets circling another star. Although they are too close to the star to be habitable, they are the smallest planets we’ve ever observed circling as close to their star, not unlike our sun.
A newly identified comet is coming home for the holidays. And by holidays I mean mid-December and by home I mean the Sun. So really that first sentence doesn’t mean anything. But a comet is going to graze the surface of the Sun, most likely
A modern day tale of Icarus! The burning need to see an asteroid pass between the Earth and the moon led one man to do his best impression of Father Christmas one and a half months early. Translated from French paper Est Republicain: A madm
It’s pretty apparent the sky is going effing bananas. Moon’s are going super and now the sun is frigging multiplying. Or, at least is seemed like it was. This shot from Chinese television appears to show a pair of suns shining down like thi
The Weird Things staff loves all kinds of science, but we hold a special place in our heart for “weird science”, which is exactly what astronomers from the University of Alberta are saying is going on inside the neutron star Cassiopeia A. A
No one knows exactly why the sun rose roughly 48 hours ahead of schedule in the remote Greenland town of Ilulissat which like many arctic circle towns spends prolonged periods in total darkness. Some say global warming has melted the ice ca
So a new research paper has come out and told us what Hollywood has been telling us for years; if we meet aliens they’re most likely going to act like 16th century conquistadors and take our resources and annihilate us in the process. Simil
Astronomers are chuckling to themselves after laypeople paying attention freaked out last week when two astroids swooped through Earth’s orbit, nearly missing our planet. While a double complete asteroid swipe is rare, the still scary idea
The sun has awoken from his slumber and you will feel his wrath upon your global positioning satellites and financial services. Richard Fisher, head of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, explains what it’s all about: “The sun is waking up from a
Phil Plait dissects a recent rumor about the Betelgeuse star. The short version of the rumor? The star is going to go all supernova in weeks or months (not years or hundreds of years) and the brightness could affect crops and cause streamin
Probably not, but maybe! A mystery object in a galaxy far, far away could be a supermassive black hole that got booted from its home galaxy’s center, according to a new study. Then again, the strange body could be a rare type of supernova o
A thin film of water ice and organic material has been identified on an asteroid by a NASA telescope. This bolsters the theory that an asteroid brought both crucial elements for life to Earth. “It now appears that when the asteroids and pla
Who needs The Watcher? According to radio astronomers at the University of Manchester, a “baffling new object” in a nearby galaxy is unlike anything they’ve seen before. But those who know better sure recognize that color scheme, that statu
As per Popular Science: Until recently, radio astronomers have concentrated almost exclusively on the high-energy radiation streaming in towards Earth from exotic stellar bodies like pulsars, quasars, and super-massive black holes. But now,
After the discovery of Neptune in 1846 astronomers began to wonder if there were other planets beyond its orbit. The discovery of Pluto (now not a planet) seemed to answer the question, but others wondered if even further out a larger earth
In the latest Scientific American theoretical physicists Alejandro Jenkins and Gilad Perez speculate that there might be a greater chance of life developing in other universes with different physical laws and that our own may not be as fine
In an interesting experiment to see how well terrestrial bacteria might survive on Mars, a group built their own Mars simulator. From UniverseToday.com: A team led by Giuseppe Galletta of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Pad
The Russian space research institute IKI has announced ambitious plans to explore the planet Venus. Is this a sign that they’ve forgone Mars because the “Red Planet” is just so cliche now? Or do they know something we don’t? BBC NEWS | Scie
Mr. Show had it first… Real story.
Ah, moons. So often overshadowed by your rocky, gassy, and thermonuclear overlords, you help invoke tides, stabilize axial tilts, sculpt and replenish rings, and provide at least one species with a stepping stone to timidly venture from the
photo credit: aresauburn™ Space.com posted an article last week about a boy being hit in the hand with a meteorite. Since then the online community has been abuzz, some excited, some crying fraud. The details of the event itself are sketchy
Saturn’s North Pole (Cassini-Huygens, 2007 and 2008) In November 1980, planetary scientists eagerly examined transmissions received from the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it sped past Saturn. And with good reason! Amid those transmissions was the
A five-part series that tries to explain how to make the science of Star Trek real… Probably the most fascinating idea that Star Trek popularized was the idea of a warp drive. This was a concept from golden age sci-fi that went mainstream v
Astronomers have identified two massive balls of ice, orbiting a dwarf planet on the fringe of our solar system. According to sciencenews.org: You’d need a mighty tall glass to hold two space objects that researchers have now identified as