Small, rocky planets can coalesce around a wide variety of stars, suggesting that Earth-like alien worlds may have formed early and often throughout our Milky Way galaxy's history, a new study reveals ...

The Milky Way as a laboratory for civilizations Any attempt to chart alien societies has to start with the structure of The Milky Way itself, a disk roughly 100,000 light years across with hundreds of ...

A blip of light in the outer reaches of the Milky Way might be a bizarre black hole born at the beginning of time itself—and the long-sought solution to the mystery of dark matter. Astronomers are ...

New supercomputer simulations suggest the Milky Way could be surrounded by dozens more faint, undetected satellite galaxies—up to 100 more than we currently know. These elusive "orphan" galaxies have ...

An unusual collection of stars may represent the remnants of a dwarf galaxy that the Milky Way devoured about 10 billion years ago. Astronomers have dubbed the ancient galaxy Loki, after the Norse god ...

Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. A collision between ...

The Milky Way galaxy's bright center is most visible in the United States from March to September. No special equipment is needed to see the galaxy, but dark skies away from city lights are essential.