About 20% of asteroids are metal worlds similar to Earth's core

In 2022, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft touched down on an asteroid

Dust of asteroid Bennu, slightly wider than the Empire State Building is tall, was found to be rich in carbon, nitrogen, and organic compounds essential for life. The presence of magnesium-sodium phosphate indicated Bennu may have broken off from a primitive ocean world.

Earth is constantly bombarded by material from space

Most of this matter is composed of small particles, with any smaller than 33 feet in diameter burning up in the atmosphere. Larger asteroids can reach the ground, and those larger than several thousand feet cause global damage, including earthquakes and tsunamis.

Experiments suggest nuking a metal-rich asteroid may strengthen it

Scientists exposed meteorite samples to proton irradiation at CERN to mimic the effects of a nuclear detonation. The material exhibited greater resistance to breaking after the exposure, suggesting nuclear weapons may better serve to deflect asteroids, not break them.

Simulate asteroid impact, mitigation, and defense scenarios

Tens of thousands of asteroids are in orbit in our solar system, and only a fraction come close enough to concern humanity. This simulator allows you to see the big picture scenarios of an asteroid impact, strategies to mitigate its destruction, and how Earth could defend itself.

Asteroids are often unobserved until they are days away from Earth

Even those large enough to cause local or regional damage are too small, dim, and far away to be observed readily from cosmological distances. New tools, like NASA's NEO Surveyor telescope, aim to address gaps in detection systems.

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

The 45 planets astronomers think are most likely to host alien life

The list includes familiar names like Proxima Centauri b (4 light-years away) and four planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system (about 40 light-years away), but even the nearest of those would take humanity roughly 114,000 years to reach at current spacecraft speeds. The list's real near-term value is as a targeting guide for the James Webb and upcoming Nancy Grace Roman space telescopes.

Asteroids are artifacts of water's presence in the solar system

Asteroids contributed to planet formation and carried water from the solar system's outer reaches toward the center. They were also early providers of the necessary elements and conditions for life to evolve on Earth.

The CCZ is believed to harbor trillions of dollars of valuable minerals and thousands of undiscovered species

Located between Hawaii and Mexico and spanning an area larger than the European Union, the Clarion-Clipperton Zone is the world's region with the most contracts awarded to groups seeking to extract valuable metals by collecting polymetallic nodules. Conservative estimates suggest that 21.1 billion tons of polymetallic nodules exist in this abyssal plain, but about 90% of the species in the area are unknown to scientists.

Shooting stars, or meteors, are fragments of asteroids and comets that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere, creating streaks in the sky called meteor showers.

As of 2025, over 131 million pieces of debris orbit Earth

These pieces range in size from a grain of sand to the size of a bus and orbit with an average speed of 10 kilometers per second.

Tidally locked exoplanets experience extreme atmospheric temperatures

On worlds like WASP 76b, which orbits its host star approximately 3% the Earth-sun distance, temperatures on its day side can vaporize iron. Winds more than 14 times the speed of sound blow this material to its night side, where it condenses and falls as liquid metal.

The 'Celestial Police' accidentally discovered asteroids while planet hunting

The group was formed in 1800 to find a planet some astronomers believed existed between Mars and Jupiter. Prior to their disbanding in 1815, the group instead discovered Vesta, Juno, and other objects they would call asteroids.

Tracking the latest meteorite falls on Earth

Roughly 50 tons of meteorite material arrives on Earth every day, and many of the larger objects survive the hot temperatures of the atmosphere and make landfall. This tracker compiles data from survey sites across the globe to present the latest...

Space archaeology studies space trash in the context of heritage and social meaning

Some orbiting objects, such as Elon Musk's Tesla, have symbolic or historical importance, despite being functionally worthless. The oldest human-made object in Earth's orbit is Vanguard 1, a grapefruit-sized satellite launched in 1958. The strangest may be an experimental, inflatable space station containing live cockroaches.

Mar's moons, Phobos and Deimos, are thought to be captured asteroids

Of the two Martian moons, Phobos orbits more quickly, completing three revolutions a day. It gets 1.8 meters closer to Mars every year, and may crash into the planet in about 50 million years.

View the most expensive materials on Earth, led by those forged in particle accelerators

Californium-252—valued at $27.8M per gram, as of 2025—is far rarer and more valuable than gold, silver, or diamonds due to production and transportation costs. The most expensive substance ever found or created is antimatter, costing approximately $62.5T per gram.

Shooting stars, or meteors, are fragments of asteroids and comets that burn up as they enter Earth's atmosphere, creating streaks in the sky called meteor showers.

A cup of coffee on Earth contains about 100 proton masses worth of dark matter

The estimate is based on Earth's location within the Milky Way and the dark matter cloud it resides in. Because scientists do not know the nature of dark matter, the mass may be accounted for with any number of dark matter particles of varying mass.

About 99% of Earth's atmosphere is made of nitrogen and oxygen

At 78% and 21% respectively, the two elements are followed by argon with almost 1%. Trace amounts of other molecules, including greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide, and particulate matter such as dust and pollen, make up the remainder of the atmosphere's contents.

How scientists study Earth's geocorona, the farthest portion of the planet's exosphere

Seen via ultraviolet radiation scattered by neutral hydrogen in the region, observations by the ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory indicate that the geocorona extends roughly 50 times Earth's diameter above its surface. At this distance, the geocorona extends beyond the Moon's orbit.

There may be 74,963 kinds of ice, resulting from water molecules rearranging themselves

The theoretical limit greatly expands the known types of ice, with type Iₕ being the most common on Earth and forming hexagonal crystals. The extreme environments of planets like Uranus and Neptune can create a variety of ice with unique structures and properties, as these conditions can reshape these crystals into new geometries.

What is the Kuiper Belt?

The Kuiper Belt is a collection of extraterrestrial objects that might've been a planet if it hadn't been for Neptune. Still, the belt is a fascinating collection of dwarf planets, rocks, ice, and comets. Extending beyond Neptune's orbit, the Kuiper Belt provides an endless selection of interesting objects and anomalies for astronomers to explore.

All of the world's gold, visualized

Out of the total above-ground stock of gold (weighing roughly 216,265 metric tons), the largest share is found in jewelry (97,149 metric tons).

Take a journey to the Earth's core

This animated video takes you on a journey through the different layers of the Earth's core, with insight into what makes up each shell. Earth's outer core, which is about 1,400 miles thick, is made up of liquid iron and nickel at a blistering...

When it formed 4.5 billion years ago, Jupiter was twice its current size

Its original size was deduced from the orbits of its moons, Amalthea and Thebe. The planet's magnetic field was also 50 times stronger than today, or 400 times stronger than Earth's.

Why space resource extraction companies are racing to harvest lunar helium

Without a magnetic field to deflect it away, helium-3 from solar wind has accumulated on the lunar surface over billions of years in significant quantities. With a reported value of $20M per kilogram because of its potential use in clean nuclear fusion, harvesting of helium-3 may form the basis of a future lunar economy.

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.'

Watch how deep-sea mining equipment collects and processes polymetallic nodules—metal-rich, potato-shaped rocks—from the ocean floor and creates environmentally damaging plumes of sediments.

While atoms are normally made of protons, neutrons, and electrons, exotic ones have been built with antimatter—alternate versions of normal matter that live for fractions of a second and are about a billion times as rare.

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

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.

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.

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

Most of the observable universe's volume consists of voids and supervoids—enormous regions of space with little to no galaxies, stars, or light.

Scientists can determine Earth's past climate conditions by analyzing air trapped in microscopic bubbles within ice cores—columns of compressed snow layers that build up over hundreds of thousands of years.

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.

See the 25 of the best photos of auroras from around the world.

The US dollar is the most widely circulated currency in the world, and is involved in nearly 90% of global transactions

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

The Nasdaq's 'Magnificent 7' companies are responsible for roughly 40% of the Nasdaq 100 index's gains, while the remaining 93 companies account for the other 60%.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Lesser-known phobias include turophobia, or the fear of cheese, and nomophobia, the fear of being without your cell phone.

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.

In 1963, a basement renovation in Turkey revealed a passageway to a hidden, multilevel underground city that once housed as many as 20,000 people

Use this calculator to find the dollar value of your mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care for your children.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

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

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

The 1987 Nintendo video game 'Stadium Events' isn't known for being particularly fun, but its scarcity has made it a highly sought-after item that has sold for up to $35K at auction.