Sarah Kaplan Ben Guarino The Washington Post

If dinosaurs had possessed telescopes and the will to gaze skyward 100 million years ago, they might have seen a very different Saturn - one without its iconic rings. And if humans manage to survive another 100 million years, our descendants may also miss the discs of ice and dust that encircle the golden gas giant.

The sun's atmosphere regularly erupts with fast-moving flashes of protons and explosions of energetic particles that can hit Earth within minutes and disrupt radio communication, interfere with GPS, and fry the electric grid.

The source of all light and life on Earth is also the source of one of its biggest natural threats: space weather. The sun's atmosphere regularly erupts with fast-moving flashes of protons and explosions of energetic particles that can hit Earth within minutes and disrupt radio communication, interfere with GPS and fry the electric grid. A "worst c...

Some 130 million years ago, in a galaxy far away, the smoldering cores of two collapsed stars smashed into each other. The resulting explosion sent a burst of gamma rays streaming through space and rippled the very fabric of the universe.

When two black holes merged 1.8 billion light-years away, their violent union sent shock waves through space and time. On Aug. 14, three precisely tuned machines sensed the cosmic fallout, a ripple known as a gravitational wave.

If dinosaurs had possessed telescopes and the will to gaze skyward 100 million years ago, they might have seen a very different Saturn - one without its iconic rings. And if humans manage to survive another 100 million years, our descendants may also miss the discs of ice and dust that encircle the golden gas giant.

The sun's atmosphere regularly erupts with fast-moving flashes of protons and explosions of energetic particles that can hit Earth within minutes and disrupt radio communication, interfere with GPS, and fry the electric grid.

The source of all light and life on Earth is also the source of one of its biggest natural threats: space weather. The sun's atmosphere regularly erupts with fast-moving flashes of protons and explosions of energetic particles that can hit Earth within minutes and disrupt radio communication, interfere with GPS and fry the electric grid. A "worst c...

Some 130 million years ago, in a galaxy far away, the smoldering cores of two collapsed stars smashed into each other. The resulting explosion sent a burst of gamma rays streaming through space and rippled the very fabric of the universe.

When two black holes merged 1.8 billion light-years away, their violent union sent shock waves through space and time. On Aug. 14, three precisely tuned machines sensed the cosmic fallout, a ripple known as a gravitational wave.