The discovery made headlines worldwide and even appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. After more than a half-century of searching, physicists finally detected gravitational waves — ripples in the fabric of spacetime — from two colliding black holes. Scientists went wild.
But gravitational waves weren’t the only news that made 2016 a truly momentous year in astronomy. Scientists also discovered thousands of new worlds (one so close we could reach it in 4.2 years if we traveled at the speed of light) and launched missions to nearby solar system planets.
Although these stories easily top our “greatest hits” list below, not all stories arrive with such a crashing impact that they immediately change how we perceive the universe. Most unfold slowly. Those stories are the ones that are truest to the scientific process as it zigzags toward the truth. So as we review 2016’s top astronomy news stories, we’ll also review milestones, including a new data release that’s bound to remap the galaxy, and other tales of unsteady progress, such as changes in our thinking on dark matter.
It’s worth mentioning that 2016 also pulled the Moon a tad closer to Earth, revealing a supermoon that caused a ruckus of responses. And it pushed a few notable people away from us with the passings of John Glenn and Vera Rubin.
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