compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

Eclipses Injured Their Eyes, and the World Never Looked the Same A young woman visited New York Eye & Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai Hospital shortly after the eclipse of Aug. 21, 2017. She told Dr. Avnish Deobhakta, an ophthalmologist, that she had a black area in her vision, and then drew a crescent shape for him on a piece of paper…more

A Rock Fell From Space Into Sweden. Who Owns It on Earth? The iron rock’s journey from the depths of space ended with a thud in a dense pine forest, about an hour north of Stockholm, around 10 on a November night four years ago. Unusually, its trajectory was caught on several cameras in the region used to track meteoroids…more

Controversial new theory of gravity rules out need for dark matter Dark matter is supposed to account for 85% of the mass in the universe, according to conventional scientific wisdom. But proponents of a radical new theory of gravity, in which space-time is “wobbly”, say their approach could render the elusive substance obsolete…more

This 1,000-Year-Old Smartphone Just Dialed In Resembling large, old-fashioned vest pocket watches, astrolabes allowed users to determine time, distances, heights, latitudes and even (with a horoscope) the future. Recently, an astrolabe dating to the 11th century turned up at the Fondazione Museo Miniscalchi-Erizzo in Verona, Italy…more

Cosmic Forecast: Blurry With a Chance of Orbital Chaos Researchers discovered that a sunlike star named HD 7977, found 247 light-years away in the constellation Cassiopeia, could have passed close enough to the sun about 2.8 million years ago to alter the orbits of the Earth and other planets…more

Surprise: An ‘Extraterrestrial’ Gadget Was Something More Familiar In January of 2014, a meteor fell from space off the coast of Papua New Guinea. That might have been the end of it, but several years later Avi Loeb, a theoretical astrophysicist at Harvard, drew on seismic data from near the site, looked for crash remains on the ocean floor and proposed that the remains…more

Good News and Bad News for Astronomers’ Biggest Dream The United States should commit $1.6 billion to building an “extremely large telescope” that would vault American astronomy into a new era, according to the National Science Board, which advises the National Science Foundation. In a statement on Feb. 27, the board gave the foundation until May to decide how to choose between two…more

Life After Asteroid Bennu Last fall, a NASA spacecraft named OSIRIS-REx dropped a capsule containing more than 120 grams of space dust into the Utah desert. That material came from Bennu, an asteroid that, a billion years ago, broke off from a bigger world that may have hosted liquid water. Studying this material will clarify the role that asteroids might have played in bringing life’s ingredients to Earth…more

Unveiling the Sun: NASA’s Open Data Approach to Solar Eclipse Research As the world eagerly anticipates the upcoming total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, NASA is preparing for an extraordinary opportunity for scientific discovery, open collaboration, and public engagement. At the heart of the agency’s approach to this unusual event lies a commitment to open science, ensuring that the data…more

Meet the Two Women Leading Space Station Science The International Space Station provides researchers access to the unique features of low Earth orbit: long-duration microgravity, exposure to space, and a one-of-a-kind perspective of our planet. These special attributes enable scientists to conduct innovative experiments that can’t be done anywhere else…more