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 ...

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.” ...

Stars don't form out of nothing, but tracking the gas and dust that do eventually form stars is hard. They float around the galaxy at almost absolute zero, emitting essentially no light, and generally ...

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

Step into the vast and mysterious depths of interstellar space with this breathtaking 4K journey through the universe. This video takes you beyond the boundaries of our solar system, offering a ...

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.

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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.

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 ...

Together they form the heliosphere within the surrounding local interstellar medium—the plasma, neutral particles and dust that fill the space between stars and their respective astrospheres.