Stars don't form out of nothing, but tracking the gas and dust that do eventually form stars is hard. They float around the ...

The universe is different. “In the interstellar medium,” says Schilke, “argon-36 is by far the most abundant, and we were just too stupid to realize it.” ...

Decades ago, astronomers estimated that “ordinary” matter (basically everything that isn’t dark matter or dark energy) makes up 5% of the universe. There was just one problem—they had no idea where ...

A team of astronomers, led by researchers from the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO), has uncovered an unexpected and intricate network of tangled, supersonic filaments within a ...

Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb suggests that if interstellar object 3I/ATLAS isn't a comet, nor an asteroid, it may have been ...

The Milky Way's interstellar medium—that is, the dust and gas that threads between our galaxy's billions of stars—is an abundant yet elusive material.

The solar system drifts inside an immense, low-density cavity known as the Local Hot Bubble (LHB). This region, spanning at least 1,000 light-years, radiates X-rays due to its searing million ...

This probe would take measurements of the plasma and magnetic fields in the interstellar medium and image the heliosphere from the outside. To prepare, NASA asked for input from more than 1,000 ...

Our peer-reviewed reports present the evidence-based consensus of committees of experts. Published proceedings record the presentations and discussions that take place at hundreds of conferences, ...

Interstellar travel is very difficult, but from what we currently know about the interstellar medium it’s not impossible. And it's certainly not a clear explanation of the Fermi paradox.

Priscilla Diane Chapman Frisch, a University of Chicago Research Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics and a world-leading scientist on the heliosphere and the local interstellar medium, died on ...

The probe would be built to last 50 years, with the ultimate goal of making it 1,000 astronomical units out, dwarfing previous strides by human spacecraft and delving into the interstellar medium ...