Confusing calls for ‘priority boarders’ and numbered groups can make the process drag on — so it might surprise travelers to learn that there’s actually a tried and tested boarding system proven to make the process quicker.

Airlines use slower boarding methods because they help sell perks like priority boarding and seat upgrades.

Planetary alignments happen more often than you might think. Here’s why this one is special.

When someone talks about frozen water, they typically mean the ice cubes in a cold drink or the vast glaciers in Earth’s coldest corners. What most people don’t know, however, is that H2O molecules can arrange themselves into many different types, or phases, of ice with various structures. Researchers have discovered more than 20 of these phases, the latest of which—called Ice XXI—a team recently created under extreme pressure, allowing water to turn to ice at room temperature.

Chances are that all your encounters with frozen water—while trudging through slushy winter streets, perhaps, or treating yourself to cool summer lemonades—have been confined to one structural form of ice, dubbed Ih, with the h referring to its crystal lattice’s hexagonal nature. But there is so much more to ice than that.

At the start of the year, Earth will quietly reach a milestone in its orbit around the sun. Known as perihelion, this is the moment when our planet is closer to the sun than at any other point in the year.

If you’ve been following astronomy headlines, you might have noticed a curious new arrival to the neighborhood: Comet 3I/ATLAS. It’s not just another “regular” comet from the outer solar system–this one’s an interstellar visitor, meaning it was born around another star entirely.

For the first time, scientists have detected two black hole mergers with spins so unusual they may reveal a new generation of cosmic collisions. The twin discoveries, labeled GW241011 and GW241110, were announced by the international LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA collaborations—teams that have been tuning their instruments to detect the faintest ripples in space and time. Each signal, lasting less than a second, was a final whisper from black holes that collided billions of years ago.

Michael Pravica talks about how consciousness can transcend the physical realm.

In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the international LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration reports on the detection of two gravitational wave events in October and November of 2024 with unusual black hole spins. This observation adds an important new piece to our understanding of the most elusive phenomena in the universe.

In an extraordinary advancement for astrophysics, the international LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA Collaboration has announced the detection of two gravitational wave events from last year that showcase unprecedented black hole spin characteristics. Published today in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, their findings unravel intricate details about black hole mergers, significantly deepening our understanding of these enigmatic cosmic phenomena. These detections open new frontiers in the quest to decode the fundamental physics governing black holes, their formation, and evolution in the universe.

Scientists have "heard" the symphony of two newborn black holes — each created when its respective parent black holes crashed together and merged. One of those collision events, in fact, was the first of its kind.