technical updates

September 8th, 1966 was a Thursday. Not a fresh-start-Monday or an exciting Saturday. A regular old Thursday; except that this one catalysed a cultural phenomenon. This was the Thursday that "Star Trek" was first broadcast , drawing viewers across the United States into a space-age world that revolutionised television. The thing is, in 1966 no exoplanets (planets beyond our Solar System) had actually been discovered . Yet the franchise gave audiences a galaxy brimming with desert planets, ocean worlds, binary sunsets, and countless versions of Earth. Sixty years later, astronomers have confirmed more than 6,000 planets beyond the Solar System , known as exoplanets. But how well do "Star Trek"’s fictional worlds compare with those astronomers have actually discovered? When many of us think "Star Trek", the first planet that comes to mind is the dry, hot, and rocky V...

The Crescent Nebula shines in the constellation Cygnus. (Image credit: Kevin Boardman) Astrophotographer Kevin Boardman captured this spectacular view of the Crescent Nebula, revealing intricate filaments of gas surrounding a massive star nearing the end of its life some 4,700 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Boardman's image represents a turbulent chapter in the life of the colossal Wolf-Rayet star WR 136 (HD 192163), which, visible as a blue point of light at the center of the image, is expected to end its life in a dramatic supernova explosion in about 100,000 years . The 25-light-year-wide bubble is formed from stellar material cast off by WR 136 during its transformation into a red giant star, according to NASA . Repeated impacts by fast-moving stellar winds later send shockwaves through the outer shell, creating the complex filaments we see today. Catalogued as NGC ...

This might look like a rocket launching off Earth, but it's actually a rocket booster perfectly landing on our planet after fulfilling its duty. (Image credit: Chelsea Gohd) On Aug. 30, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope launched into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket — then, after completing its job, the rocket's boosters safely landed back on Earth. Watching the events unfold, Space.com's Chelsea Gohd caught one of these beautiful landings on camera as onlookers at NASA's Kennedy Space Center watched in awe. What is it? The Roman Space Telescope is NASA's next great observatory, meant to revolutionize how we view the cosmos. Equipped with instruments like a coronagraph that can directly image exoplanets and a Wide-Field Instrument (WFI) that has a massively wide field of view, it's designed to work with big names like the Hubble Space Telescope and James We...

Scientists have spotted the first hints that Albert Einstein's formulation of gravity operates in the quantum realm. The hints have to do with observations of a falling quantum object, and though this may not seem like a huge deal (literally, we are talking about atoms here), it could be an important step on the road to a theory of ... everything. To start, we have to go back to the early years of the 20th century. Consider Einstein's iconic theory of gravity, general relativity , and the elusive realm of quantum mechanics . While the former describes the universe on scales of planets, stars and black holes , even demonstrating how galaxies and galaxy clusters formed, the latter describes the counterintuitive physics found on scales smaller than atoms. But there is a problem: these two important theories don't play well together. There is no quantum theory of gravity . However, scient...

It began with an unusual flash detected off the coast of South Africa by an aging American satellite — and to this day, debate continues over whether this odd Cold War event involved an illicit atmospheric nuclear test. The strange story of the "South Atlantic Flash," better known as the Vela Incident, began on Sept. 22, 1979. At that time, Vela 6911, a satellite in a constellation developed by the United States for the specific purpose of detecting nuclear detonations , observed something that immediately alarmed officials: a peculiar flash of light emanating from somewhere over the South Atlantic Ocean. A significant part of what concerned U.S. officials at the time had been the double flash of light detected during the event — a distinctive feature that strongly resembled the flashes produced by a nuclear explosion in Earth's atmosphere . The characteristic double flash results ...

I'm a pretty thrifty guy; no one will ever accuse me of being a hoarder or a bulk shopper. You won’t ever see me at a Costco lugging around 48-count packs of toilet paper, hernia-inducing apple bags, or ginormous 5-pound boxes of Goldfish Crackers. But after tinkering around with "The Last Starship" for a while, I think I could be converted into a doomsday prepper; someone who loads up on necessary supplies and has a keen sense of the proper protocol for acquiring stockpiles of food, water, ammo, and —if I were stuck out in deep space — oxygen. After being available in early access for nearly three years, "The Last Starship" 1.0 was finally released on Feb. 6, 2026, for PC from Introversion Software, the same inventive creators of "Prison Architect". It's hardly a new release at this point, but I've been absorbed by it for the last few months, and it'...