Stories by Charles Q. Choi

A dying star swallowing a giant planet hints at the fate awaiting our solar system some five billion years from now

THESAN—the largest, most detailed computer model of the universe’s first billion years yet made—is helping set expectations for observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

Called Earendel, the star is nearly 13 billion light-years from Earth

Mineral deposits, not salty water, are the most likely cause of radar reflections spotted beneath the planet’s south pole, a new study finds

Cygnus X-1, the first black hole ever discovered, is significantly bigger than previously believed

New experiments have answered the decades-old question of how pieces of splitting nuclei get their spins

The giant planets will appear spectacularly close together in Earth’s sky during the solstice on December 21

In vivo bioprinting might also help repair hernias and treat infertility

Boosted by sunlight, “bubblecraft” might reach Proxima Centauri after a 185-year voyage

The dwarf planet could be a more habitable world than scientists had thought

The new method may be faster and easier than other genetic storage attempts

Nanoscale experiments reveal that quantum effects can transmit heat between objects separated by empty space

Worlds with off-kilter orbits may be much more common than previously believed

Astronomers have observed new details of black-hole growth previously hidden by obscuring clouds of gas and dust

A new study suggests a strange and surprisingly lively geological cycle for the small world

The ongoing search for the graviton—the proposed fundamental particle carrying gravitational force—is a crucial step in physicists’ long journey toward a theory of everything

Ancient relics confirm our solar system’s tempestuous origins

A new look at old data from NASA’s Cassini orbiter shows complex organic molecules are gushing from the tiny moon

Data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft reveals thunderbolts around the giant planet’s stormy poles

New research suggests collisions between moonlets created the oddly-formed objects

A new study validates the feasibility of constructing gossamer-thin light sails for propelling spacecraft to other stars

New research reveals a possible mechanism allowing “black stars” and “gravastars” to exist

A new debugging tool can pinpoint errors that cause neural networks to make mistakes

The object grew to more than 800 million times the mass of the sun when the cosmos was only 5 percent its present age