This is a good question, and also a good reminder to be careful with one’s language when writing about physics! Most of the time, if you’re reading an article, what we mean by mass and rest mass is ...

It is commonly known that, if you accelerate an object, its mass will increase; however, to understand why this phenomenon occurs, we mustn’t think of the object’s mass increasing. Instead, we should ...

Speed can make objects act as if they have more mass, but can you ever make an object appear to have less mass? It’s true that speeding an object up to considerable fractions of the speed of light ...

A research group is reporting the detection of extragalactic planet-mass objects in a second and third galaxy beyond the Milky Way after the first detection in 2018. With the existing observational ...

Scientists using a global array of radio telescopes have detected the universe’s lowest-mass dark object by observing how it warped light through gravitational lensing. The invisible mass, about a ...

When a star is young, it is often still surrounded by a primordial rotating disk of gas and dust, from which planets can form. Astronomers like to find such disks because they might be able to catch ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

The 3I/ATLAS interstellar object, detected by NASA, is remarkably larger and more massive than earlier estimates, making it an exceptionally rare visitor. Its unusual trajectory and characteristics, ...