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Big Bang Theory
Immediately after the Big Bang, the Universe was more energetic than ever. What was it like? When we look out at the Universe today, we see that it’s full of stars […]
Cosmic inflation is what happened before, and set up, the Big Bang. Here’s what it’s like to live in an inflating Universe. Our Universe today is full of matter and […]
Many hoped we could do without dark matter. On cosmic scales, the evidence has finally spoken. For over 40 years, scientists have argued over dark matter’s existence. The extended rotation curve […]
What’s going on at the smallest and largest scales of all? Let’s look to the absolute limits of physics. Have you ever wondered what’s out there in the Universe, on the […]
Even before we have the James Webb Space Telescope, a controversy over when the first stars formed is growing. As far back as our most powerful telescopes have ever looked, we’ve […]
If dark energy were stronger or weaker, everything would be pretty much the same. And that’s a puzzle. After the Big Bang, the Universe was full of matter and radiation. It […]
Dark energy tells us that the Universe’s expansion is accelerating. Here’s what that means for our disappearing Universe. One of the biggest surprises for humanity about the Universe is that […]
In 2015, the ultra-distant galaxy CR7 was measured to have hydrogen and helium, but no carbon or oxygen. With new ALMA observations, there’s carbon after all. As brilliant as our Universe’s […]
Just one equation relates the expansion of space to all the matter and energy we have. If you know this, you can know the fate of the Universe. Last week, […]
In the far future, the last star burns out, stellar corpses get violently ejected, and galaxies accelerate away. And then the fun begins. For centuries, the biggest questions about our Universe […]
If it can stretch the Universe from the size of a subatomic particle to billions of light years in a fraction of a second, why doesn’t Einstein’s relativity forbid it? When […]
Among the general public, people compare it to the aether, phlogiston, or epicycles. Yet almost all astronomers are certain: dark matter and dark energy exist. Here’s why. If you go by […]
It took the Universe 9.2 billion years to create the Earth, and another 4 billion for complex life. Could we have gotten there faster? The story of how the Universe came […]
If everything was hot, dense, and super close-together at the Big Bang, what kept us from collapsing into a singularity? The Big Bang is one of the most counterintuitive ideas […]
There have been a lot of public advocates from the “no dark matter” camp, getting lots of popular attention. But the Universe still needs dark matter. Here’s why. If you took […]
If the multiverse is real, why hasn’t our Universe, in a sea of infinite possibilities, run into another one at least once? The Universe we inhabit is vast, full of matter […]
Distances in the expanding Universe don’t work like you’d expect. Unless, that is, you learn to think like a cosmologist. There are a few fundamental facts about the Universe — its origin, […]
If you want to know how we get something from nothing, you’d better understand what we mean! When we look around at our world and Universe today, we talk and think […]
If nothing can escape from beneath the event horizon, where do these phenomena come from? The most important feature of a black hole is that it has an event horizon: a […]
How did black holes get so supermassive so fast? Astrophysics may be about to find out, thanks to three big 2017 discoveries. There’s a big problem when we look at […]
There’s so much that we’ve discovered, looking as deeply as possible into the void. But what are we missing? Start with the laws of physics, a Universe full of a specific […]
Just because it isn’t Thanksgiving anymore doesn’t mean we don’t have an entire Universe to be thankful for. Every day, we have a choice whether we take our lives, our existence, […]
The first stars formed almost half a billion years before we could see their light. Here’s why. At the moment of the Big Bang, the Universe was full of matter and […]
If you think we know it all, you’ll never be ready for the next big breakthrough. When you’re taught the scientific method, you think of a neat procedure you can […]
Very sure. Here’s how we know. You’ve no doubt heard that the Universe itself has been around for 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang, and that scientists are extremely confident […]
Either possibility offers a tremendous existence, but philosophically, there’s so much more to think about. “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, […]
From the most beautiful to the most impactful, some of these are so powerful it’s breathtaking. “Truth in science, however, is never final, and what is accepted as a fact […]
One of cosmic inflation’s cofounders came out against it, calling it not even science. But it is… and so much more. “There’s no obvious reason to assume that the very same […]
From what it’s expanding into to whether things are moving faster-than-light, this clears up some of our greatest misconceptions. “The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders […]
Something’s got to be wrong. But is it what we think about the star, the Universe, or something else? “The older you get, the more you realize that the way […]