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Why We’ll Never Live in Space
Medical, financial and ethical hurdles stand in the way of the dream to settle in space
Sarah Scoles is a Colorado-based science journalist, a contributing editor at Popular Science, and a senior contributor at Undark. She is author of Making Contact (2017) and They Are Already Here (2020), both published by Pegasus Books. Her book Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons (Public Affairs) will be out in 2024. Credit: Nick Higgins
Medical, financial and ethical hurdles stand in the way of the dream to settle in space
Scientists debate what the future of the cosmos looks like and whether space will ever stop getting bigger and bigger
Physicists are on an ever urgent quest to find a fuller understanding of what makes the cosmos tick, which they call a theory of everything
At a stay in Biosphere 2, I went in skeptical but learned to understand why analog astronauts love what they do
The laws of physics allow time travel. So why haven’t people become chronological hoppers?
Science might be redefining what “life out there” really means.
New “exascale” supercomputers will bring breakthroughs in science. But the technology also exists to study nuclear weapons
Scientists are abandoning conventional thinking to search for extraterrestrial creatures that bear little resemblance to Earthlings
A new investigation of unidentified aerial phenomena could have bigger impacts on atmospheric science than on astrobiology
The RadSecure program aims to remove dangerous substances from medical facilities and other industries
An archival project aims to document the experiences of people who suffered from U.S. nuclear weapons testing
Scientists lost one of their best tools with the demise of the Arecibo telescope
Scientists aim to make the search for extraterrestrial intelligence academically respectable
Traditional rockets won't get us to the stars. Some scientists are pushing against the edges of physics to find out what will
A laboratory buried nearly a mile beneath South Dakota is at the forefront of a global push for subterranean science
The National Science Foundation is considering pulling its support from the famous Arecibo radio dish in Puerto Rico
The space agency has embarked on a long and arduous process to select a new grand space observatory that will meet the needs of astronomers in the mid-2030s
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