You’re outside. It’s a clear, dark night, the kind where the sky feels less like a ceiling and more like an ocean. You’re gazing up, lost in that endless, diamond-prickle of the cosmos. Suddenly—zip. A streak of light blazes across your vision. Gone in a second. “A shooting star!” you whisper. You quickly make a wish. We’ve all done it. It’s a magical, universal human experience. We’ve been seeing them for as long as we’ve had eyes to look up. But it begs the billion-dollar question: if it’s not really a star… what is it? And if science has a…
Author: Šinko Jurica
Let me tell you, holding a rock that’s fallen from space… it’s a feeling that’s tough to put into words. I’ve done it. That rock in your hand is a real, tangible piece of elsewhere. It’s a direct connection to the wild, massive universe out there. We’re not talking about just collecting pebbles. This is a flat-out treasure hunt for cosmic artifacts. The best part? You can absolutely do this. The real thrill isn’t just in finding one. It’s in the hunt. It’s the game of figuring out where to look, what to search for, and testing your patience against…
Ever stare up at the night sky and just… wonder? I mean, beyond the moon, beyond the planets we know, there’s a whole lot of other stuff out there. Our solar system is basically a busy construction site that’s been quiet for 4.5 billion years, and it’s full of leftover materials. We call most of these rocky leftovers “asteroids.” This, of course, leads to the big question I get all the time: where do asteroids orbit? And it’s a great question. The short answer? They orbit the Sun. Just like we do. But the full answer is way more interesting.…
When you picture a comet, what do you see? Probably that classic, stunning image: a bright, fuzzy smudge of a head, with a brilliant, glowing tail streaming out behind it, slicing across the blackness of space. It’s an awesome sight. For thousands of years, people saw these “hairy stars” and wondered. What were they? Omens? Messengers? We know now they’re ancient chunks of ice and rock from the solar system’s edge. But that one big question still gets asked all the time: what causes a comet’s tail? The answer is simpler than you might think. It’s our star. The Sun.…
Look up at the night sky. You see a spray of pinprick lights. We’re taught those lights are stars. We’re taught that all the good stuff—planets, life, cosmic drama—happens near them. Our solar system is the perfect example: a neat, well-lit model of planets tucked in close to their parent star. But the galaxy has a dark, hidden side. A secret population. It’s teeming with unseen worlds, adrift in the permanent midnight of interstellar space, completely untethered from any star. These are the rogue planets. For scientists, finding these cosmic ghosts is like stumbling upon a new, invisible continent. The…
For nearly all of human history, “the planets” meant just the ones we could see. Our little celestial family. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. That was it. The glittering lights beyond were just stars. Fixed. Lonely. Our stories about them were pure fiction. Then, everything changed. In the 1990s, the universe cracked wide open. We got the first, rock-solid proof: other stars have planets, too. We call them exoplanets. And suddenly, the galaxy felt infinitely more alive. This discovery lit a fire under astronomy. In just a few decades, we’ve gone from zero confirmed exoplanets to over 5,000. The count…
For as long as I can remember, our solar system had nine planets. It was just one of those facts you learn in school, like 2+2=4. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and… Pluto. Good old Pluto, the little guy bringing up the rear. It was dependable. Then, 2006 happened. A bunch of scientists in a room somewhere voted, and just like that, Pluto was out. It got “demoted.” That single act kicked up a cosmic hornet’s nest. People were mad. I mean, genuinely upset. How could a planet just stop being a planet? It felt like changing…
We see it every day. It powers our world. It gives us life. It’s the most familiar thing in the sky. And yet, we barely know it. It’s a giant, burning question mark hanging 93 million miles away. So, what is the sun made of? You probably learned the simple answer in school: “mostly hydrogen and helium.” That’s true. It’s absolutely correct. But that simple answer glosses over a wild story—a story of incredible violence, ancient origins, and the exact same stuff that’s in your body right now. The sun’s composition isn’t just a static list. It’s the recipe for…
Head outside on a clear night. Look up. Chances are, you’ll spot the Moon, our planet’s oldest friend, hanging right there. That’s a satellite. Now, reach into your pocket, pull out your phone, and open a map. See that little blue dot showing you exactly where you’re standing? That dot is thanks to a signal from another set of satellites, ones you can’t see, zipping by miles overhead. Both are satellites. No doubt. But they are worlds apart. One is a massive, ancient ball of rock, born from cosmic violence. The others are high-tech machines, some no bigger than a…
When I was a kid, the answer to “how many moons in our solar system” was a party trick. Easy. You’d tick them off on your fingers. Earth has one. Mars, two. Jupiter had its four big ones. Saturn had a few. The whole solar system felt… tidy. Knowable. Yeah, that solar system is long gone. The real number is just staggering. And it seems to break its own record every few months. The “over 200” in my title? That’s already old news. The true count is rocketing past 300, maybe even 400. Our solar system, it turns out, is…