SORABUMI
From the cosmos, to you.
SORABUMI is a place to slow down and think about the "why" of space.
No background knowledge needed. If the night sky—or something on your desk—looks a little different after you finish reading, that's enough.
What we write
- Explainers and columns193
- The solar system, exoplanets, stars and galaxies, open mysteries, life in space. One question per piece. We try not to stop at the answer, but to show how anyone figured it out.
- Short stories177
- Brief fiction set in space, readable in a few minutes. The people and organizations are made up. The science stays close to reality, though a story may stretch it now and then.
What we don't write
- Breaking news. New findings usually get covered a while after the announcement.
- Certainty the researchers didn't claim. Very little in astronomy is "proven" or "confirmed" outright.
- Fear-driven stories. Asteroid impacts and solar storms come with how likely they actually are.
- Astrology, conspiracy theories, or pseudoscience.
How articles are written
- Sources are space agencies such as NASA, JAXA, and ESA, plus universities, research institutes, and papers. No aggregator sites or news-media articles.
- Every article ends with a reference list—title, publisher, and access date—so you can check the original yourself.
- Numbers and dates that can't be traced back to a source don't go in.
- Where researchers disagree, or nobody knows yet, we say so.
- Diagrams are drawn for this site; photos come from space agencies and other public sources. Credits are on each article.
Please don't cite SORABUMI as a source
SORABUMI articles are reading material for getting to know space. We don't recommend using them as a source or citation in reports, papers, journalism, or encyclopedia edits.
- They are not peer-reviewed or checked by subject-matter experts.
- They simplify and paraphrase for clarity, and may leave out precise definitions or conditions.
- They may not be updated when newer research comes out. Check the publication date.
If you're doing research, follow the reference list at the end of each article to the primary sources. That's part of why the list is there.
The name
Sorabumi combines sora (sky) and fumi (letter)—a letter from the sky. Spacecraft data, starlight that took thousands of years to get here: it all felt like mail from space to Earth.
About this English edition
SORABUMI is written in Japanese first. The English pages are translations, and where the two differ, the Japanese version is authoritative. Use the language switch in the header to read the original.