Space & Physics

The night sky isn’t perfectly dark—instead it glows faintly, and the source isn’t exactly local

Sooner or later a doomsday asteroid will wipe out most life on Earth—unless, that is, we prevent threatening space rocks from hitting us in the first place

“Professor Pickleball” reveals the science behind the U.S.’s fastest-growing sport

We are in a new and different kind of moon race, one the U.S. is losing. To win, says a former NASA official, we need new strategies

Physicists have detected a long-sought particle process that may suggest new forces and particles exist in the universe

Physicists showed that photons can seem to exit a material before entering it, revealing observational evidence of negative time

Scientific American’s staff share their favorite sci-fi books, from beloved classics to overlooked gems and our modern favorites

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) could soon shine very bright in Earth’s skies

An office in the Pentagon investigated UFOs—and the paranormal—over a decade ago, segueing into a long saga leading to Congressional hearings and breathless news stories today. But the real story looks more like former defense officials pushing their personal mythology, rather than any cover-up of aliens

A small asteroid, 2024 PT5, will spend the next two months alongside our planet as a mini moon before swooping back to deep space

Physicists report the first observations of quantum entanglement in top and anti-top quarks, the heaviest known fundamental particles and their antimatter counterparts, inside the Large Hadron Collider

Experiment shows that a nuclear explosion could save the planet from a deadly asteroid impact