Questions about the cosmos

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

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

When the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launched on Christmas Day 2021, astronomers hoped it would revolutionise our understanding of the early stages of the Universe. And they were right. Almost a

Flicking through the pages of BBC Sky at Night Magazine each month, you’d be forgiven for thinking astronomers have black holes pinned down. Whether it’s the dramatic imaging of black hole shadows by

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

Our eyes paint such vivid portraits of the world around us that it’s easy to forget how much of our surroundings go unseen. Wi-Fi signals pinging this way and that, subatomic particles and radiation z