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Astrophysics
As more time passes since the Big Bang, more of the Universe comes into view. But how much? Even though it’s been billions of years since the Big Bang, there’s a […]
Gravity gets weaker as the distance squared. But gravitational waves only get weaker as the distance. Why? One of the things we often just accept about the world is that […]
Before we formed stars, atoms, elements, or even got rid of our antimatter, the Big Bang made neutrinos. And we found them. The idea of the Big Bang has captivated the […]
What happened 4.56 billion years ago is the most important part of the cosmic story ever to happen to us. If you were to look at our Universe at the time […]
But we shouldn’t give up on direct detection. Here’s why. Dark matter is not only the most abundant form of matter in the Universe, it’s also the most mysterious. Whereas all […]
For billions of years, dark energy couldn’t have been detected. Now, it’s everywhere we look. When we look out at the ultra-distant Universe, billion of light-years away, we’re seeing it as […]
We can see light from the atoms in the Universe before the first stars form. And no, I don’t mean from the CMB! After the Big Bang, it took only a […]
Happy birthday to Pluto, discovered on this day in 1930. Pluto, first discovered in 1930, was no more than a distant dot in our most powerful telescopes. Clyde Tombaugh’s original images […]
It’s a rare occasion for orbits to align so perfectly. Enjoy the sights this Tuesday. On Tuesday, February 19th, the Moon will reach perigee, its closest point of approach to planet […]
It’s been over 100 years since Einstein, and over 300 since Newton. We’ve still got a long way to go. From measuring how objects fall on Earth to observing the motion […]
From billions of miles away, a faint, single pixel shows us how precious and alone Earth truly is. There are people alive today who can remember a time where no human-made […]
The heaviest elements in the periodic table have their own unique story. No, they don’t come from a supernova. When it comes to the elements of the Universe, every one […]
The first planet beyond ‘naked eye’ astronomy will pass within just 1° of Mars. Although there are eight major planets in the Solar System, most of us never see Uranus or […]
If we were in a place like the Coma Cluster instead of the Local Group, we’d already be dead. In a living spiral galaxy, like the Milky Way, the rich gas […]
When two different techniques give two different results, either someone is wrong, or something incredible is happening. Imagine you were a scientist attempting to measure some property of the Universe. […]
A new study claims that dark energy is changing with time. Here’s what it would mean, if true. For the past generation, we’ve recognized that our Universe is a particularly dark […]
We’d never flown past or imaged a small, isolated Kuiper belt object before. Here’s what we know so far. As 2018 ended and 2019 began, NASA’s New Horizons flew past its […]
Whether you caught or missed the eclipse of January 20/21, 2019, here’s what you need to know for all the ones you’ll ever view again. On January 20/21, 2019, a very […]
Our Universe is full of surprises. This latest one, AT2018cow, has ignited a controversy between astronomers. The Universe is an ever-changing place, particularly if you look at it on long-enough […]
A rare, ultra-diffuse galaxy is full of stars and not much else. Here’s how to make sense of it. One of the greatest puzzles in the entire Universe is the dark […]
With a new data run coming in 2019 at unprecedented sensitivity, we might finally get our answers. Over the past three years, LIGO discovered ten independent instances of merging black holes […]
With an assist from Einstein’s gravity and the power of the Hubble Space Telescope, it’s the brightest quasar we’ve ever discovered. In astronomy, there are two types of questions to […]
Kepler showed us that the Universe is full of planets around other stars. TESS is giving us our next great leap. It’s been nearly a decade since NASA’s Kepler mission first […]
This is what we’ve learned from first object ever discovered to enter our Solar System from interstellar space. Billions of years ago, our Solar System was an extraordinarily different place […]
On January 20/21, half of Earth will experience a total lunar eclipse. For the first time in 19 years, this includes all of North and South America. When the Sun, Earth, […]
The 40th edition of the Starts With A Bang Podcast features Astronomer John O’Meara, the first pristine matter ever seen, and a 15-meter space telescope proposal! One of the great […]
We can explore the farthest reaches of the Universe, but can’t even complete our own cosmic backyard. The history of astronomy has been a history of receding horizons. The invention […]
The reason why is simple, and should apply to every solar system like our own. On January 3rd, 2019, Earth reached the point in its orbit where it’s at its closest […]
If you photograph the Sun at the same time every day, you get a bizarre figure-8 shape: an analemma. Here’s why. At any time of day, you could theoretically set up […]
When two black holes merge together, about 5% of their mass gets lost. Where does that information go? Do merging black holes lose information? They absolutely must, according to General […]