Building the solar system to scale in the Nevada desert

Visualize a model of all of time, where our lives span less than the width of a human hair

The massive model was built across a Mojave Desert lake bed using 800 lights spaced just 10 meters apart. Within the model, the entirety of human civilization appears only in the final centimeter.

The team responsible for the first interplanetary sundials included Bill Nye

While reviewing designs for instruments to be carried by future Mars rovers, Nye suggested adapting the function of a calibration tool, which would be used by the Spirit and Opportunity rovers to help calibrate the brightness and color of their panoramic cameras on the Martian surface.

Simulating the moon's surface in the desert

And why is the next cohort headed there? The geological conditions in Flagstaff, Arizona, can easily echo those of the moon, making the area a prime spot to train astronauts. This article explains how scientists crafted these training grounds and why astronomers are drawn to the nearly century-old city.

Everything you need to know about the planets in our solar system

NASA provides a re-introduction to our solar systems's planets, and a few other neighborhood residents. In the Milky Way galaxy, there are more planets than stars. We’ve discovered thousands of planets orbiting distant stars, but it all started with the current lineup of eight planets orbiting our own star—the sun. Learn more here.

Explore our favorite visualization of the immense scale of space, from an astronaut to the size of the observable universe

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Explore the scale of the universe in this interactive adventure

The sheer enormity of the universe escapes our ability to conceive of its scale, despite the best efforts of human imagination. This interactive provides an intuitive sense of how small we are, from a single astronaut to the Milky Way and beyond.

See how CES comes to life with a massive setup across Las Vegas

This behind-the-scenes video shows crews assembling the sprawling CES show—filling more than 2.5 million square feet of exhibition space with booths, lights, and tech from around the world ahead of the event’s opening.

Jupiter’s size forced the creation of modified planetary formation models

Since solar winds remove gases from protoplanetary disks within millions of years of a star’s birth, models needed to provide a mechanism to jump-start Jupiter’s formation and growth. The solution involved incorporating pebbles of matter into the disk.

Explore a gallery of O'Neill cylinder space settlements

The structures consist of a pair of cylinders with a total enclosed land area of 500 square miles and can house several million people. Each is approximately 20 miles long, 4 miles in diameter, and contains three mirrors that open and close to form a day-night cycle inside.

Fly through the Valles Marineris, the largest canyon in the solar system

Stretching farther than the width of the continental US and with depths as much as four times those of the Grand Canyon, the Valles Marineris is believed to have formed when Mars’s crust tore open during intense volcanism in the planet’s past.

A 1,000 square kilometer patch of solar panels in Africa can power most of Europe

The $500 billion Desertec initiative would have constructed massive solar farms in the Sahara and expansive electrical transmission networks across continents. However, the plan was built on concentrated solar power technology, which is more expensive and less practical than photovoltaics.

Visualize the size of countries on the sun and other planets

Pluto is roughly the size of Australia. What about Namibia and Nepal? How small would North America appear on the sun? Compare the relative size of continents and countries with this easy-to-use interactive.

Playing around with an AR sandbox

The white sand acts as a projector screen and a topographic map image is projected on the surface. An XBOX Kinect is positioned to read the contours of the sand and draw new topographic lines according to how the sand is moved.

While the sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit, their gravity also pulls on the sun, causing it and everything else in the solar system to orbit around a mutual balance point called the barycenter—the true center of the solar system.

View a colorful gallery of solar features curated by the National Solar Observatory

Many of the images are captured at different nonvisible wavelengths, such as UV, and then colorized into the visible range to illuminate the sun's magnetic field and magnetism-driven solar activity, including coronal loops and filamentary prominences. Close-up imaging also reveals solar granules—Texas-sized cells of material that bubble to the surface from the convection zone.

The Planetary Society provides an active role in advancing space exploration

Founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Louis Friedman, and Bruce Murray in response to public interest in space not adequately reflected in government investment, it is now the world’s largest nonprofit space organization, with more than 2 million members.

Why Nevada is home to a real-life 'Simpsons' house

The home, a strikingly accurate recreation of the cartoon family's home on Evergreen Terrace, was built for a 1997 promotional contest. Back then, it was painted to look exactly like it did on TV, but the contest winner declined to move in, choosing a $75,000 cash prize instead.

NASA's big dream that never came to life

Conceived in the early 1960s, the Sea Dragon was an audacious ocean-launched rocket design that would have dwarfed the Saturn V in both scale and payload—but its extreme engineering challenges kept it firmly on the drawing board.

How are scientists turning deserts into farmland?

This article explores how engineers are using a liquid nanoclay solution to transform barren deserts into productive fruit farms, drawing inspiration from how clay particles carried by floodwaters in the Nile Delta used to improve the fertility of...

Inhabiting Mars without terraforming might be accomplished with 'worldhouses'

A network of interconnected, airtight bubbles would require several orders of magnitude fewer materials than those required to re-establish the entire planet's atmosphere to resemble Earth. However, the whole network would be compromised by a single micrometeor impact that destroys the air seal.

How the ancients calculated Earth's size correctly

Watch this seven-minute video to hear Carl Sagan explain how ancient Greek polymath Eratosthenes correctly calculated the size of the Earth in the third century BCE. At some point, Eratosthenes noticed a discrepancy in the length of shadows cast in different cities during the summer solstice. This observation grew into a simple experiment that enabled Eratosthenes, the head librarian at the Library of Alexandria, to calculate the Earth's size precisely.

The 3D-printed rocket maker competing with SpaceX

Producing rockets cheaply and at scale may require atypical manufacturing processes like those developed by Relativity Space, a 3D-printer of rockets. Relativity hopes to not just compete with, but beat, SpaceX in the race to get the first...

Visualize chaos with the orbit of three or more objects bound by gravity

In this simulation, users can simulate randomized and preset orbital configurations for up to 10 celestial bodies to observe the system's evolution in an interactive 3D space. The same configurations can produce different orbital behavior—a feature of chaos—by making small changes to an object's mass under advanced settings.

Voyager Station, the world's first space hotel, is planned for 2027

The structure spans 488 meters in diameter and will rotate to simulate one-sixth of Earth's gravity while circumnavigating the planet every 90 minutes. The Voyager Station is designed to accommodate 450 guests and 150 crew members, providing amenities such as restaurants, a sports hall, and a movie theater.

Biosphere 2 is the largest Earth science experiment ever built

The vivarium—an enclosed system including animals and plants—is sealed from below with 454 metric tons of stainless steel liner and includes an ocean habitat with more than 700,000 gallons of seawater. B2 is visited by 100,000 people yearly, including more than 10,000 K-12 students.

Photos from Burning Man 2023

The annual Burning Man festival occurs in August where over 70,000 people gather in the austere setting of the Black Rock Desert playa in Nevada. The city is set up for a week in concentric circles where attendees set up their habitats and art...

The International Space Station is slowly falling due to atmospheric drag

To stay in orbit, the largest human-made object in space needs periodic rocket boosts to maintain its orbital speed and height. Its solar panels collect enough energy to power over 60 average US homes each year.

The first image of a black hole was captured by creating an Earth-sized virtual observatory from a network of eight radio telescopes.

Planeterrellas create artificial auroras that mimic the atmospheric displays of light by setting up an electric field between two metal balls in a jar filled with a small amount of air.

Explore the known asteroids, comets, and spacecraft involved in asteroid studies within our solar system with 'Eyes on Asteroids,' a 3D visualization from NASA.

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

Track the location of the Voyager probes, currently between 13 and 15 billion miles away from Earth.

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

Watch this video that uses Lego bricks to explain how venture capital works.

Artificial coral reefs have been 3D printed from nontoxic, biodegradable terracotta clay, which coral polyps have used as a foundation for rebuilding marine ecosystems.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

Explore chaos in this simulation of two double pendulums, where small differences in the release angles produce wildly different outcomes.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

The Great Salt Lake's distinct dual coloration results from high-salinity organisms that only live in the northern portion and produce a purple protein.

Sears sold DIY house kits starting at $600 in its famous catalog from 1908 through the 1940s, resulting in roughly 10,000 'Sears and Roebuck houses' being built.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Children are now three times more likely to say they want to be a YouTuber when they grow up than an astronaut, with some even attending 'YouTube camps' that teach kids how to create content for the platform.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

Waves off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, can reach over 100 feet and are caused by the area's deep underwater canyon geography

The syncytiotrophoblast is the outer layer of the placenta and the largest human cell, spanning an area about twice that of a king-sized bedsheet.

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes