Jokes

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) said it had unleashed the unprecedented bursts of energy on the third attempt, as beams of protons thrust around the 27-kilometre (16.8-mile) accelerator collided at close to the speed of light. “This is physics in the making, the beginning of a new era, we have collisions at 7 [...]

Since the discovery of planets outside our solar system in the 1990s, astronomers have tallied more than 400 extrasolar worlds, many unlike anything known before. Two recent studies show that the formation of planets may leave detectable chemical signatures in their host stars, a finding that could help scientists zero in on planetary systems even [...]

A suborbital spaceship owned by aspiring space tourism operator Virgin Galactic was airlifted into the skies over California’s Mojave Desert on Monday for its debut test flight. The sleek, six-passenger ship, called VSS Enterprise, remained attached to its carrier aircraft throughout the two-hour, 54-minute flight. Read more

About 23 percent of the universe is made up of mysterious ‘dark matter’ — invisible material only detected through its gravitational influence on its surroundings. Now two astronomers based at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) have found a hint of the way it behaves near black holes. Read more