14 January 2021
Tau Ceti is a star just 12 light years away – and it could host a planet called PXP-4 that sits as close to the star as Earth does to our sun with its year about as long as ours
12 January 2021
Signs of the metals that make up Earth’s crust have been seen in the light coming from four dead stars known as white dwarfs, which may have consumed distant planets similar to ours
9 December 2020
Solve this week’s fiendish puzzle Sunday drivers. Plus the answer to puzzle #88
2 December 2020
Bizarre volcanoes that ooze ice magma or explode like geysers reveal the geological rumblings beneath other worlds. Some might even provide the spark for alien life
17 November 2020
Astronomers may have seen a Jupiter-like planet begin to form while its host star is still growing, proving a long-held theory about planet formation
28 October 2020
Rockets eventually run out of fuel, which limits how far they can go. But now we are mastering the art of solar sailing, we can expect to keep exploring into distant, uncharted space
5 October 2020
All Systems Red by Martha Wells, Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin all make our list of best sci-fi escapism
23 September 2020
With wildfires raging, the outlook looks bleak from San Francisco. Thinking about the future in terms of “hope horizons” can help, writes Annalee Newitz
26 August 2020
From rogue worlds that roam the cosmos alone to Tatooines that orbit two suns, astronomers are expanding our definition of habitable exoplanets
13 August 2020
By now we’re all feeling the effects of video call fatigue. Even though we’ve found new ways to connect with each other virtually during lockdown, remote conversation can’t replace the benefits of real, face-to-face social interactions.In the pod this...
