CNN – World

By Sherry Liang, CNN The calendar of annual meteor showers saves one of its best for last. The Geminids will light up the night sky Monday night into Tuesday morning, and NASA calls this shower “one of the best and most reliable” for its bright, fast and abundant meteors. At its peak at 2 a.m,

By Katie Hunt, CNN Astronauts need to be in unparalleled physical and mental shape to handle the rigors of space — writer Tom Wolfe famously described it as the “right stuff” in his 1979 book of the same name. NASA’s latest class of would-be space sailors is no exception. But increasingly, you don’t have to

By Amy Woodyatt, CNN Archaeologists have unearthed what they believe is the first example of a crucifixion in northern Europe. The skeleton of a man with a nail through his heel was discovered in Fenstanton, Cambridgeshire, east England, by experts from Albion Archaeology, it was revealed Wednesday. The archaeological team made the discovery while excavating

By Ashley Strickland, CNN A planet has been found orbiting in a double-star system that is so hot and massive that some astronomers didn’t think a planet could exist around it. The giant exoplanet, or planet located outside of our solar system, was discovered orbiting b Centauri, a stellar pair located 325 light-years from Earth

By Pierre Bairin, Anaelle Jonah, Hamdi Alkhshali and Mostafa Salem, CNN French authorities have released a Saudi man detained on Tuesday, after mistaking him for one of the killers of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The 33-year-old was detained at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport before his flight to Riyadh at 9:30 a.m. local time, and was

By Ashley Strickland, CNN We’re about to get a new perspective on some of the most extreme objects in the universe. In the early morning hours Thursday, NASA launched its Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer mission, or IXPE, to measure X-rays released by black holes and neutron stars. The satellite successfully launched at 1 a.m. ET

By Ashley Strickland, CNN There is a new comet in town, and December is your only chance to see it before disappears forever. Astronomers say that Comet Leonard is our best and brightest comet to see in 2021. The comet was first discovered in January by astronomer Greg Leonard. The celestial object has likely spent

By Rachel Ramirez, CNN Every time new climate research is published, news headlines are posted or tweets are shared, a giant steel box perched on a granite plain in the Australian state of Tasmania will be recording it all. With its thick steel walls, battery storage and solar panels, the developers of “Earth’s Black Box”

By Ashley Strickland, CNN Ten men and women are ready to begin training so they can journey to the International Space Station, the moon and beyond. The new astronaut class of 2021 was announced by NASA on Monday. The 10 astronaut candidates, the first new astronaut class in four years, were selected from more than

By Ashley Strickland, CNN Whenever we’re confronted with aspects of science fiction becoming scientific reality, philosophical questions arise. This week, many were asking this one: What is a robot, really? Films and TV shows have offered us myriad archetypes of what robots could be like — as varied as the terrifyingly clever Cylons of “Battlestar

CNN Editorial Research Here’s a selected list of commercial airplane crashes caused by military acts or by terrorism. June 14, 1940 – Soviet bombers shoot down the Kaleva, a Finnish commercial plane traveling from Estonia to Finland, killing all nine on board. One passenger was Henry W. Antheil Jr., an American diplomat who was carrying

By Ashley Strickland, CNN The use of invisible lasers in space may sound like something from science fiction, but it’s real. NASA’s upcoming Laser Communications Relay Demonstration could revolutionize the way the agency communicates with future missions across the solar system. These lasers could lead to more high-definition videos and photos from space than ever