Charles Q. Choi

Microbes carried by laser-propelled sails could serve as interstellar probes that can build communications stations to phone home from Alpha Centauri.

Over the past year, astronomers have gleaned new insights into black holes across the universe. Here is a list of 15 times black holes surprised us in 2022.

Even though winds on Mars are weak, they could be sufficient to provide power for future exploration and colonization of the Red Planet, a new study finds.

A plume of searing hot rock as wide as the continental U.S. is rising up from near the core of Mars and might help explain recent volcanism and earthquakes seen at the Red Planet, scientists say.

A Martian megatsunami may have raced across the Red Planet after a cosmic impact similar to the one that likely ended Earth's age of dinosaurs, a new study finds.

Astronomers have identified a half dozen exoplanets that may be made of an exotic form of matter unknown on Earth.

Mercury may still rumble with earthquakes, or "mercuryquakes," according to evidence found in cliffs on the planet's surface.

When the biggest stars in the universe die, they may form exotic states of matter generally not seen in the universe since fractions of a second after the Big Bang.

The find could boost the search for alien life.

Earth is constantly showered by space rocks, but how many of these actually land on Earth's surface?

Cosmic impacts can make planets and moons more porous than previously thought, potentially boosting their ability to host life, a new study finds.

The soil and water of Mars are normally too harsh for crops, but research led by a then-high schooler finds that alfalfa plants and photosynthetic bacteria might help make conditions fit for farming.

A new model exploring the dwarf planet Ceres suggests radioactivity deep in the small world may have created criss-crossed geology at its surface.

A meteorite on Earth holds new evidence that asteroids do indeed mysteriously spit out pebbles, a new study finds.

Scientists have found the Martian birthplace of a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite, potentially shedding light on the origins of Mars and other rocky worlds.

Earth's magnetic field, which protects the planet from harmful blasts of solar radiation, is much older than scientists had previously thought, researchers say.

Reversal happened in less than a thousand years.

The Higgs boson, the so-called 'God particle,' could have destroyed the universe shortly after the Big Bang, but the force of gravity saved the cosmos, scientists say.

Liquid water once shaped the rock inside a meteorite from Mars, but likely did not support any microbial life, a new study finds.

A detailed new telescope image of the heart of our galaxy is now giving researchers their best view yet of hundreds of strange magnetic filaments seen nowhere else.

For the first time, astronomers may have imaged the cool disk of gas surrounding the gigantic black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, a new study finds.

New meteorite research suggests that cosmic impacts might have helped deliver vital ingredients of life to ancient Earth.