General relativity helps explain the lack of planets around tight binary stars by driving orbital resonances that eject or destroy close-in worlds. This process naturally creates a “desert” of ...

Ocean waves are a vast and steady source of renewable energy, but capturing their power efficiently has long frustrated ...

Toy gyroscopes can do all kinds of interesting tricks. The most mysterious one, precession, seems to defy gravity. By definition, precession refers to a change in the orientation of the rotational ...

ALTHOUGH the Earth revolves around the Sun, from our point of view we see the Sun moving around the sky along an imaginary circle called the ecliptic once every 365.256 days. This is known as the ...

Earth's axial precession is a gyroscopic wobble, analogous to a spinning top, causing its axis of rotation to trace a cone over time. The primary cause of Earth's precession is the gravitational ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. The Earth's precession is captured in stunning detail in this image by a veteran ...