Robert Lea

Astronomers may have solved the mystery of how the complex building blocks of life first formed, finding dust traps around young stars could make an ideal formation location.

Dark matter could act as a cosmic matchmaker between dark matter and merging supermassive black holes, solving astronomy's "final parsec problem."

Using NASA's Fermi telescope, astronomers have discovered a hidden "annihilation feature" in the gamma-ray burst known as the "BOAT," or the "brightest of all time."

Astronomers have found that Ariel, a moon of Uranus, has some of the most carbon dioxide-rich deposits in the solar system, hinting at a buried water ocean.

Habitability depends on more than just a planet's distance from its host star. New research looks at the impact stellar magnetism has on exoplanets.

Citizen scientists have discovered what may be a brown dwarf racing through the cosmos at around 1.2 million miles per hour. Now astronomers want to know what launched it.

Using data from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, scientists have determined that the solar system's tiniest planet, Mercury, hides a not-so-tiny secret: a 10-mile-thick mantle of diamond.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have investigated a super-Jupiter that is one of the coldest exoplanets ever directly imaged.

"Cosmic lighthouses" comprised of rapidly spinning dead stars that blast out radiowaves could be used to shed new light on dark matter, the universe's most mysterious "stuff."

Astronomers have detected 21 rare systems with widely separated neutron stars and sun-like stars. These binaries are "one in a million" and challenge dead star binary formation models.

A missing link black hole that sits in the mass gap between stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes is "parked" right by the Milky Way's central black hole, Sagittarius A*.

NASA's ISS-mounted X-ray telescope NICER has weighed and measured the closest pulsar to Earth. The neutron star PSR J0437 spins 174 times a second and has a mass of 1.4 suns.

Seven years ago, the Cassini mission ended when the spacecraft dramatically crashed into Saturn, but the data it collected is still delivering results, revealing the secrets of Titan's oceans.

Signs of life could survive on the icy surfaces of Saturn's and Jupiter's moons, Enceladus and Europa, despite harsh radiation bombardment from the sun and supernovas.

Even though the sun's current solar cycle hasn't reached its peak yet, scientists have seen signs that the next 11-year solar cycle is already getting ready for its time to shine.

The concept of dark energy came about just around the time Space.com booted up.

The universe would be filled with zombie galaxies and dead stars if not for supermassive black hole-powered 'hearts and lungs' that help slow star formation.

Scientists have seen a cannibalistic neutron star spraying S-shaped jets like a cosmic garden sprinkler as it feeds on a companion star.

Astronomers may have solved the mystery of how hot Jupiter exoplanets are born, finding a gas giant with a weird orbit in the process of transforming into just such a world.

"It's possible we’re swimming in a whole sea of these objects that are really faint and hard to see."

Over the last 25 years, black hole physics has experienced something of a revolution.

How can any telescope see a galaxy 33.8 billion light-years away in a universe that is only 13.8 billion years old?

The composition and great density of 'hot Saturn' exoplanet Smertrios are a challenge to planet formation models that the detection of water may help solve.

To celebrate the second anniversary of the James Webb Space Telescope's first images, NASA has revealed a cosmic Penguin and Egg.

A simulated universe created by a supercomputer should help astronomers better analyze dark matter and dark energy clues delivered by "dark universe detective" telescopes Roman and Rubin.