Carl Sagan was only partly right. For while it’s true that we’re made of star stuff, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that the universe is composed of numbers. And not just any numbers, mind you, but enormous numbers. Gigantic, mind-bogglingly tremendous whoppers of numbers. Numbers that the human mind can scarcely comprehend….

When the BBC announced that Jodie Whittaker would be the first female Doctor Who, fans of the long-running science-fiction series were quick to query: “What will she wear?” It wasn’t a jab at her sex; far from it. Clothes have always maketh the man, especially when that “man” is an enigmatic Time Lord with the…

One week in 2014, a 45-year-old snapshot unexpectedly went viral. Taken in 1969, the black-and-white photograph showed a young bespectacled woman, a wide grin on her face as she gingerly balances a tower of manuals, each one thicker than the last. The subject of the picture, as it turned out, was Margaret Hamilton, the pioneering…

Neil deGrasse Tyson has plenty to raise a glass to this month. Not only did the famed astrophysicist become the first American to receive the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication on Tuesday, but he’s also getting his very own beer, courtesy of the Asheville Brewing Co. in North Carolina. An American version of the…

Meteorologist and Space.com skywatching columnist Joe Rao was 7 years old when Charles M. Schulz, to use Rao’s own words, “really blew it.” It was the week leading up to the total solar eclipse of July 20, 1963, and the Peanuts creator had devoted a six-day story arc to the astronomical event. In one strip,…

On May 25, 1977, a director named George Lucas gave the world its first glimpse of a galaxy far, far away. Who knew that a space opera about a farm boy who befriends a wizard and a smuggler pirate, frees a princess and liberates a galaxy would spawn a multibillion-dollar franchise and cultural touchstone? Not…

NASA is having a fashion moment. Or, perhaps more accurately, fashion is having a NASA moment. Hot on the heels of Chanel’s interstellar-themed fashion show—and mock rocket launch—in March, Coach is feting a cosmically inspired collection of its own. An ode to “American dreamers and explorers who believe that anything is possible,” the luxury brand’s…

When Guardians of the Galaxy opened in theaters in 2014, it marked a distinct tonal shift in the way Marvel told its stories on the silver screen. Gone were the brooding heroes struggling to cope with the crushing onus of destiny. In their place, we got a motley crew of misfits and mercenaries who were…

To protect its spacecraft from the rigors of deep space, a team of NASA engineers is turning to a time-honored—and battle-proven—solution: chain mail. Led by Raul Polit Casillas, whose mother is a fashion designer in Spain, the group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has developed a prototype fabric that puts an extraterrestrial spin on the…