Over the course of its elliptical orbit, the moon Enceladus is squeezed unevenly by Saturn's gravitational pull and deforms from a spherical shape into a football shape and back again. This cyclic stress causes a phenomenon ...
The fragile qubits that make up quantum computers offer a powerful computational tool, yet also present a conundrum: How can engineers create practical, workable quantum systems out of bits that are so easily disturbed—and ...
More than 100 years ago, astronomer George Ellery Hale brought two Pasadena institutions together to build what was then the largest optical telescope in the world. The Mount Wilson Observatory changed the conception of humankind's ...
Riding aboard NASA's Psyche spacecraft, the agency's Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration continues to break records. While the asteroid-bound spacecraft doesn't rely on optical communications to send ...
A small team of planetary scientists from the California Institute of Technology, Université Côte d'Azur and Southwest Research Institute reports possible new evidence of Planet 9. They have published their paper on the ...
NASA's Juno spacecraft came within 1,500 km (930 miles) of the surface of Jupiter's moon Io in two recent flybys. That's close enough to reveal new details on the surface of this moon, the most volcanic object in the solar ...
Scientists believe the environment immediately surrounding a black hole is tumultuous, featuring hot magnetized gas that spirals in a disk at tremendous speeds and temperatures. Astronomical observations show that within ...
Many of us would love the superpower to fly, and for good reason: Flight offers a crucial evolutionary advantage. Flying enables an animal to travel large distances quickly, in search of food and new habitats, while expending ...
To take a census of nearby cosmic objects, sending out a survey won't work. Scientists need to use many telescopes with different specializations to chart what is in the general neighborhood of the sun.
Most disease-causing bacteria are known for their speed: In mere minutes, they can double their population, quickly making a person sick. But just as dangerous as this rapid growth can be a bacterium's resting state, which ...
