Beyond the solar system

Isn’t it amazing that astronomy – humanity’s oldest science – continues to generate such a delightful amount of new knowledge? Seeing as we’ve been studying the motion of the stars for a good long whi

Of the hundreds of thousands of asteroids in our solar system, it is all too feasible that one could strike Earth. If scientists discover this is likely to happen, what are our options for defending ourselves – and who will make the key decisions? Tomas Weber reports

It’s difficult to fully grasp the enormity and extremity of Jupiter. The planet – a striped behemoth of swirling gas with around 100 moons, one of which is larger than Mercury – dominates the Solar Sy

The prospect of life on Mars – Earth’s planetary next-door neighbour, an alien world that betrays tantalising hints of a watery past – has bewitched humanity for centuries. From the ‘canals’ seen by a

I found your recent article Are We Aliens? (June, p62) very interesting. I noticed it mentioned that samples from the Mars Sample Return mission would “give us further clues” about the panspermia theo

To make a planet, first you’ll need a massive, reasonably dense cloud of cold gas and dust. Luckily, later generations of the cosmos have provided just that. These clouds, rich in hydrogen, helium and