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Cosmic Inflation
From before the Big Bang to Voyager 1, particle physicist Harry Cliff takes us on a whiz-bang tour of the Universe's evolution.
Galaxies don't simply feed their central supermassive black holes, but the activity generated inside affects the entire galaxy and more.
The Multiverse fuels some of the 21st century's best fiction stories. But its supporting pillars are on extremely stable scientific footing.
To Fred Hoyle, the Big Bang was nothing more than a creationist myth. 75 years later, it's cemented as the beginning of our Universe.
When cosmic inflation came to an end, the hot Big Bang ensued as a result. If our cosmic vacuum state decays, could it all happen again?
The second law of thermodynamics tells us that entropy always increases. But that doesn't mean it was zero at the start of the Big Bang.
Beyond the planets, stars, and Milky Way lie ultra-distant objects: galaxies and quasars. Here's how far back we've seen throughout history.
The Earth that exists today wasn't formed simultaneously with the Sun and the other planets. In some ways, we're quite a latecomer.
The Universe didn't begin with a bang, but with an inflationary "whoosh" that came before. Here are the biggest questions that still remain.
It took 9.2 billion years of cosmic evolution before our Sun and Solar System even began to form. Such a small event has led to so much.
Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is both completely normal and absolutely remarkable in a number of ways. Here's the story of our cosmic home.
Observations of an enormous cosmic structure, dubbed the "Big Ring," seem to violate the Copernican principle.
Finding it at all was a happy accident. Examining it further may help unlock the secrets hiding within the earliest galaxies of all.
The cosmic scales governing the Universe are almost unbelievably large. What if we shrunk the Sun down to be just a grain of sand?
Even after the first stars form, those overdense regions gravitationally attract matter and also merge. Here's how they grow into galaxies.
The first stars in the Universe were made of pristine material: hydrogen and helium alone. Once they die, nothing escapes their pollution.
Atomic nuclei form in minutes. Atoms form in hundreds of thousands of years. But the "dark ages" rule thereafter, until stars finally form.
In the early stages of the hot Big Bang, there were only free protons and neutrons: no atomic nuclei. How did the first elements form from them?
Some 13.8 billion years ago, the Universe became hot, dense, and filled with high-energy quanta all at once. Here's what it was like.
Cosmic inflation is the state that preceded and set up the hot Big Bang. Here's what the Universe was like during that time period.
Bang bang all over the Universe.
If the Universe is expanding, and the expansion is accelerating, what does that tell us about the cause of the expanding Universe?
In 1054, a core-collapse supernova occurred 6500 light-years away. In 2023, JWST imaged the remnant, and might solve a massive mystery.
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Dispatches host Kmele Foster is on a journey to understand humanity’s role in the cosmos. His first stop? The Atacama Plateau in Northern Chile, home to the darkest deserts and largest telescopes on earth.
If you said "with the Big Bang," congratulations: that was our best answer as of ~1979. Here's what we've learned in all the time since.
The Universe, although violent, is filled with creation events following destructive ones. 1850 light-years away, both types are unfolding.
Measurements of the acceleration of the universe don’t agree, stumping physicists working to understand the cosmic past and future. A new proposal seeks to better align these estimates — and is likely testable.
With such a vast Universe and raw ingredients that seem to be everywhere, could it really be possible that humanity is truly alone?
An annular eclipse is coming to Earth on October 14, 2023. Six months later, a total solar eclipse is headed our way. Here's the reason why.
Cosmology is unlike other sciences. When our view of the Universe changes, so does our understanding of philosophy and science itself.