Wired Science

Wired takes a look at all the exciting events and missions in space coming up this year. We can expect some spectacular results from NASA and its probes, but should be on the lookout for China, India, and the private …

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The existence of oceans or lakes of liquid methane on Saturn’s moon Titan was predicted more than 20 years ago. But with a dense haze preventing a closer look it has not been possible to confirm their presence. Until the …

Many of our most popular posts are image galleries, and this year our readers favorite collections included microscope photos, doomsday scenarios, auroras and lots of images of Earth from space. Here are are your favorites.

This VISTA image shows the spectacular star-forming region known as the Flame Nebula, or NGC 2024, in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter) and its surroundings.

This composite image combines EIT images from three wavelengths (171Å, 195Å and 284Å) into one that reveals solar features unique to each wavelength. Since the EIT images come to us from the spacecraft in black and white, they are color-coded …

The spiral galaxy NGC 3627 is located about 30 million light years from Earth. This composite image includes X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope (red), and optical data from the Hubble …

Birds listening to birdsong may be experiencing an emotional response similar to humans listening to music, according to a study tracking neural activity in sparrows.

Cassiopeia A is a 330-year-old ball of red-hot gases and space dust. But with the right makeup and some expert attention, this former star can still look positively radiant. When it’s time for Cassiopeia’s close-up, NASA turns to data visualizers, …

Spiders that build their own dummies, dinosaurs cloaked in feathers, berries of the world’s most intense color: Here are Wired Science’s favorite images of 2012.

In the well-documented case of Eminescu’s hollows, the image above provides some new insight. Though the majority of the hollows are located on and directly around the central peak, if you look closely you’ll see that there are small hollows …

What might lurk beneath Antarctica’s 5 million square miles of ice was the subject of speculation by sci-fi writers in the 1930s. One of the icy products this subgenre of Antarctic Goth horror spawned is HP Lovecraft’s novella, At the …

2012 was a banner year for bold, and sometimes wild, announcements by private space companies. From moon landings to asteroid mining, we take a look at all the new players and tell you how plausible their schemes are.

This unique image shows AB7, one of the highest excitation nebulae in the Magellanic Clouds (MCs), two satellite galaxies of our own Milky Way. AB7 is a binary star, consisting of one WR-star — highly evolved massive star – and …

This year, our list of most popular stories was dominated by 2012′s most famous robot, a long-sought subatomic particle, 10 billion exoplanets and an amazing new spider species.

We round up the most amazing, mind-blowing, spectacular, and jaw-dropping photos of planets, moons, galaxies, and nebulas from our perennially popular Space Photo of the Day gallery.

This panorama of a section of the Milky Way in the constellations of Scutum and Aquila illustrates the dynamic interplay between the birth and death of massive stars in our Galaxy.

You’ve heard the hype a hundred times: Physicists hope to someday build a whiz-bang quantum computer that can solve problems that would overwhelm an ordinary computer. Now, four separate teams have taken a step toward achieving such “quantum speed-up” by …

After an acrobatic plunge through the Martian atmosphere, NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity touched down safely in Gale Crater. Immediately, the rover began shooting photos, beaming them back to scientists and engineers waiting eagerly on Earth. Here, we’ve gathered some of …