Natalie Wolchover was a staff writer for Live Science and a contributor to Space.com from 2010 to 2012. She is now a senior writer and editor at Quanta Magazine, where she specializes in the physical sciences. Her writing has appeared in publications including Popular Science and Nature and has been included in The Best American Science and Nature Writing. She holds a bachelor's degree in physics from Tufts University and has studied physics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Latest articles by Natalie Wolchover

By Natalie Wolchover Published
UFO researchers say that new telescope footage showing a coronal mass ejection blasting Mercury has unveiled a "cloaked" spaceship parked near the planet.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
A piece of metal debris has crashed through the roof of a Massachusetts furniture warehouse. The FAA is investigating what it fell from.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
An amateur astronomer has taken a photo of the circumstellar disk around Beta Pictoris, a young star. The photo has wowed professional astronomers.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
Unidentified falling objects, or UFOs, are getting in the way of the particle beam at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Physicists are trying to figure out what they are.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
A new study suggests that Europa, Jupiter's icy moon, may be even more suitable for life than previously thought.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
Life's Little Mysteries consults experts about the strange structures and patterns found in the desert in China on Google Earth. Turns out they're for spy satellites.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
The faint glimmer of stuff emitted by black holes is called Hawking radiation. It's made of particles that escaped by way of quantum tunneling.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
A time-lapse video that strings together photographs taken by space station astronauts shows Earth in all its glory.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
NASA says asteroid 2005 YU55 will come slightly closer to the moon than the Earth, but it poses a threat to neither.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
A new sleep study has shown that realistic, scary alien encounters and abductions can be dreamed up.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
The annual Orionid meteor shower will peak in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday, Oct. 22.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
A German telescope called ROSAT is falling to Earth this weekend. Scientists say there's a 1-in-2,000 chance it will hit someone.

By Natalie Wolchover Published

By Natalie Wolchover Published
You're about a million times more likely to get struck by lightning than a falling satellite, rocket stage, or other space debris.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
Astronomers have discovered a circumbinary planet that orbits two stars, like the fictional planet Tatooine in Star Wars.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
Scientists engaged in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence will aim their telescopes at the newfound super-Earths soon, and hope to detect alien signals.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
The Harvest Moon looks red because of the filtering effects of the atmosphere. It's big because of a little-understood optical illusion.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
The moon looks very different from the top down. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured thousands of photos of our satellite's north pole region.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
Could NASA really launch a secret lunar mission as the new film "Apollo 18" implies? Historians think not.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
New research fleshes out a scenario in which intelligent ET life detects Earth's spectral changes due to greenhouse gas emissions, sees humans as a threat and kills us.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
Political issues may be the biggest hurdle when humanity is faced with tough decisions about how best to deflect an earthbound asteroid.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
Solar flares are classified on a logarithmic scale according to energy levels.

By Natalie Wolchover Published
NASA scientists have just announced that there might be liquid water on the surface of Mars. Here's why they think so, and why it matters.
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