Historical and contemporary data show that ordinary hazards turn into disasters in poor and less prepared nations. It is true of earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions etc. Examples include the more than 80,000 deaths resulting from the magnitude 7.6 earthquake in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan in 2005, and... click to read more

Most of the stars in the universe are born, live, and die within a galaxy – a system containing millions (or billions) of stars. Galaxies are extremely numerous in the universe. No matter where we look in the night sky, or in which direction we... click to read more

Soon after Pluto was discovered in 1930, astronomers learned that its orbit overlaps Neptune's orbit and that it’s rather tilted, compared to the nearly common plane of the other planets. Propagating its orbit into the past and the future then revealed the surprising property... click to read more

In 2007, Duncan Lorimer and his colleagues announced the discovery of a flash of radio light that was not only extremely short and bright but that also seemed to be coming from a galaxy far away from our own. At the time, the astronomical community... click to read more

No terrestrial rocks that formed in the first 500 million years of Earth’s history have been discovered so far, making it difficult to study this period. This, however, has not deterred scientists from trying to understand this period because many events that shaped the present-day... click to read more