Killer asteroids: how safe are we, really?

Astronomers love a challenge. They place their observatories on the highest mountains, in the driest deserts, on the coldest ice shelves, beneath the deepest oceans, in orbit around Earth and the Sun,

The worst time to look at the Moon is when it’s full, right? Not necessarily. It’s true that at full Moon, sunlight hits the surface head-on, flattening the appearance of its rugged landscape of deep

Assessing the threat from artificial general intelligence

New Horizons was the first mission sent to explore Pluto, conducting a fly-by in July 2015. It was then redirected for a close pass of a much smaller Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth, in January 2019. Tod

As the 10th anniversary of the Paris agreement looms, self-proclaimed “climate realists” argue that the targets set a decade ago are unachievable. Reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 is “utterly impla

I n 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That, at least, is what the famous rhyme tells us. Memorising such dates is a common experience of being taught history – a cliché superbly lampooned by the w