A Road Trip with Commander Chris

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Research Reveals Why Tatooine Planets are Rare February 10, 2026
Why are planets rarely found orbiting a pair of stars? UC Berkeley and American University of Beirut physicists find that general relativity makes the orbit of a tight binary pair precess. As the orbit shrinks because of tidal effects, the precesion increases. Eventually the precession matches the orbital precession of any circumbinary planet, creating a […]
Are there Hidden Dimensions to the Universe? Part 3: The Graviton Tower February 9, 2026
To test it, I want you to imagine rolling up a piece of paper into a tight cylinder. Or, if you happen to be near a source of paper, doing it in real life. The analogy works either way.
A Dense Clump Of Dark Matter, Not A Supermassive Black Hole, Could Reside In The Milky Way's Center. February 9, 2026
There's been widespread agreement that a supermassive black hole resides in the Milky Way's Center. But that may not be true. Researchers say that a dense clump of fermionic dark matter can also explain the motions of stars and gas clouds in the region. Crucially, it can also explain the famous Event Horizon Telescope image […]
NASA Let AI Drive The Perseverance Rover For Two Days February 9, 2026
NASA has taken another step towards greater autonomy for planetary exploration rovers. In December, the space agency used AI to generate waypoints for Perseverance's route on two separate days. The rover drove more than 450 meters without human input.
Using Foldable Structures To Guide Microwaves February 9, 2026
Origami and space exploration might not seem like they have much in common, but the traditional paper-folding technique solves one massive problem for space exploration missions - volume. Satellites and probes that launch in rocket housings are constrained by very restrictive requirements about their physical size, and options for assembling larger structures in orbit are […]