SCIENCE
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Rarest elements reveal planets eaten by white dwarfs
Despite their rarity, boron and beryllium can both be detected within white dwarf atmospheres. What does their presence and abundance……
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Ask Ethan: How are black holes active if nothing escapes from them?
Once you cross over to the inside of an event horizon, you can never come out again. But then, how…
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Move over, giant meteor. Here’s what the largest comet would do to Earth
Oort cloud object Bernardinelli–Bernstein has the largest known cometary nucleus: 119 km wide. An impact with Earth would be catastrophic.…
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From the smallest to the biggest objects in space
Vast arrays of planets, stars, black holes, galaxies, and more populate our Universe. Within each category, differences can be astounding.…
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Ask Ethan: How did we discover substructure inside the proton?
Protons and neutrons are composite structures: made of quarks and gluons. But knowing they had substructure goes back long before…
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Gravitational wave astronomy is now a fully mature science
In 2016, humanity announced our first successful gravitational wave detection. 10 years and 389 events later, here’s how far we’ve…
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Ask Ethan: Why does our Universe require CP-violation?
Two discrete symmetries, charge conjugation and parity, must be violated together for our Universe to exist. We haven’t found enough…
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Science’s three big hopes for finding alien life
Despite all that we’ve discovered, Earth remains the only planet definitively known to possess life. Here’s how to find a…
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Ask Ethan: What do surveys of physicists actually reveal?
At and beyond the current frontiers of knowledge, many physicists have strongly held opinions. Can surveys point the way to…
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Space wasn’t infinitely small when the hot Big Bang began
The original idea of the Big Bang was synonymous with a singularity: a point of zero volume. In this Universe,…
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