Space

134 articles with this tag

How Megathrust Earthquakes Work—Earth's Most Powerful Science

How Megathrust Earthquakes Work—Earth's Most Powerful

Megathrust earthquakes are the most powerful seismic events on the planet, generated where tectonic plates collide at subduction zones. This explainer...

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What Is Dark Energy—and Why It Rules the Universe Science

What Is Dark Energy—and Why It Rules the Universe

Dark energy makes up roughly 70% of the universe and drives its accelerating expansion, yet scientists still don't know what it is. Here's how the hun...

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How the Radial Velocity Method Detects Alien Worlds Science

How the Radial Velocity Method Detects Alien Worlds

The radial velocity method—also called the wobble method—finds exoplanets by measuring tiny Doppler shifts in starlight caused by a planet's gravitati...

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How Black Hole Jets Work—and Why They Matter Science

How Black Hole Jets Work—and Why They Matter

Black holes shoot twin beams of plasma at nearly the speed of light across millions of light-years. Here's how accretion disks and magnetic fields pow...

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What Is the Goldilocks Zone—and How It Guides the Search for Life Science

What Is the Goldilocks Zone—and How It Guides the Search for Life

The habitable zone, or Goldilocks zone, is the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Understanding how scientists...

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How NASA's Deep Space Network Talks to Spacecraft Science

How NASA's Deep Space Network Talks to Spacecraft

NASA's Deep Space Network is a trio of giant antenna complexes that keep Earth connected to every interplanetary mission, from Mars rovers to Voyager...

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How Scientists Recreate Star Explosions on Earth Science

How Scientists Recreate Star Explosions on Earth

Inside the world's most powerful rare-isotope accelerator, physicists smash atomic nuclei at half the speed of light to understand how stars forge the...

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How RTGs Power Spacecraft Billions of Miles From the Sun Science

How RTGs Power Spacecraft Billions of Miles From the Sun

Radioisotope thermoelectric generators convert the heat of decaying plutonium-238 into electricity, enabling spacecraft like Voyager 1 to operate for...

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Did Mars Have an Ocean? What the Evidence Shows Science

Did Mars Have an Ocean? What the Evidence Shows

Scientists have debated whether Mars once held a vast northern ocean for nearly four decades. New geological evidence, including a continental shelf '...

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How Gravitational Lensing Works—the Universe's Telescope Science

How Gravitational Lensing Works—the Universe's Telescope

Gravitational lensing bends light from distant objects around massive cosmic structures, acting as nature's own telescope. This guide explains the thr...

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How Reusable Rockets Work—and Why They Slashed Costs Technology

How Reusable Rockets Work—and Why They Slashed Costs

Reusable rockets land themselves after launch and fly again, cutting the cost of reaching orbit by up to 70 percent. Here is the engineering behind pr...

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How Lunar Oxygen Extraction Works—From Dust to Air Science

How Lunar Oxygen Extraction Works—From Dust to Air

The Moon's soil is roughly 45% oxygen by weight. Engineers are now developing reactors that melt lunar regolith and use electrolysis to split that oxy...

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