29 stories on space and science, newest first. Browse by section or search the archive.
From the International Space Station, Kashmir and Sri Lanka are on the same horizon. We worked out how much of India fits in one look, what the eye can pick out from orbit, and when the station is visible from your city.
Vikram and Pragyan worked for less than two weeks in 2023. The papers have been arriving since. Here is what each instrument measured, what it means, and how sure scientists are, plus our own check on one surprising number.
Everyone in India is moving at well over 1,000 km/h without feeling a thing. We calculated the speed for each city, then added Earth’s orbit, the Sun’s path around the galaxy, and what all that does to your weight.
Most guides will send you out on the night of 13 December. For observers in India, the numbers point to the following evening, once the Moon has set.
On 18 November 2026, a radio signal from Earth needs a full day to reach Voyager 1. The arithmetic of that distance explains why the mission still works, and why it cannot work for much longer.
Measure the expansion rate from the early universe and you get one number. Measure it from nearby galaxies and you get another. A decade of better data has made the gap harder to explain away.
The best optical clocks would drift by less than a second over the age of the universe. They can see gravity change the flow of time across a millimeter, and the second itself is due to be redefined around them.
Working for thirty cents an hour on glass plates of the southern sky, Henrietta Swan Leavitt found the relationship that let astronomers measure the universe. The paper announcing it went out under her director’s signature.
Jupiter’s moon Europa probably holds about twice as much liquid water as all of Earth’s oceans. Juno has now measured the ice above it, and Europa Clipper arrives in 2030 to ask whether that ocean could support life.
