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Cosmic Inflation
The expansion rate is dropping, but distant galaxies are accelerating. Here’s how. If you take a look at any galaxy in the Universe that isn’t gravitationally bound to our own, we’ve […]
If the multiverse is real, where does all the energy for it come from? One of the biggest scientific puzzles, even given our knowledge of the Big Bang, is to understand […]
Our ultimate fate depends on something we’ve barely begun to measure. One of the biggest mysteries in all of physics is dark energy. According to our best observations, the Universe cannot […]
Don’t wait until Christmas to gift a telescope this year. All throughout the year, two bright lights have stood out in the post-sunset skies. Earlier this year, on March 31, 2020, […]
And can scientists even agree on what ‘nothing’ means? The more curious we get about the great cosmic unknowns, the more unanswered questions our investigations of the Universe will reveal. […]
Entropy always increases, but that doesn’t mean it was zero to start with. One of the most inviolable laws in the Universe is the second law of thermodynamics: that in any […]
And do our black holes give birth to baby Universes? When it comes to our understanding of the Universe, the 20th century was full of surprises. A little over 100 […]
Have we always had quantum fields in the Universe? Or did they emerge at some finite time? No matter how we look at the Universe — at low temperatures or ultra-high energies, from […]
Despite the claims of one of Earth’s newest Nobel Laureates, the data doesn’t lie. One of the greatest scientific successes of the past century was the theory of the hot Big […]
It wasn’t the birth of space and time. But it was truly essential to our cosmic story. For more than 50 years, we’ve had definitive scientific evidence that our Universe, as […]
Just because you have “star” in your name doesn’t mean you are one. When we think about the objects in our Universe, they fall into two categories: self-luminous objects, like stars, […]
The Big Bang started it all. And then we realized there was more. Of all the questions humanity has ever pondered, perhaps the most profound is, “where did all of this […]
There’s a million things we haven’t done. But just you wait. The Universe as we know it began some 13.8 billion years ago with the onset of the hot Big Bang. […]
All the things that surround us and make us up weren’t always here. But where did it all come from? The Universe, as we see it today, sure is full of […]
How does one supernova get so bright, so energetic, and so massive? It’s a spectacular mystery to solve. On February 22, 2016, one of humanity’s automated sky-scanning telescopes — the Pan-STARRS Survey for […]
Today, our observable Universe extends for 46 billion light-years in all directions. But early on, things were much smaller. There are few things we can conceive of that are as mind-bogglingly […]
Ever wonder, exactly, how stars form from molecular gas and dust? So do scientists. One of the great challenges for astronomy is to determine, in gory detail, how stars are […]
Sure, cosmic inflation has its detractors. But it also has something no alternative possesses: predictions and tests. Perhaps the most compelling part of any remarkable story is its origin: how it […]
We’ve come fantastically far in our understanding of the distant Universe. Here’s how we’ll go even farther. Sometime in 2021, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will launch, deploy, and begin science […]
For over 50 years, it’s been the scientifically accepted theory describing the origin of the Universe. It’s time we all learned its truths. The Universe we know today, filled with stars […]
The highest-energy particles on Earth reach enormous energies, but it’s nothing compared to what the Universe can achieve. Deep underground in Europe, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator lives in a […]
How can physics on the smallest scales affect what the Universe does on its largest ones? Cosmic inflation holds the answer. On a macroscopic level, the Universe appears to be entirely […]
The shape of our Universe has long been recognized to be flat. But that isn’t the only possibility. The Universe is expanding, and goes on for farther than even our […]
Scientists actively researching this have known the answer for quite some time. It’s time for everyone to catch up. The Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago, and is generally regarded […]
Our Universe is 13.8 billion years old, and our Sun formed about 2/3rds of the way through. Here’s what came before it. When it comes to the great cosmic question of […]
The origin story for our Universe got a major revision nearly 40 years ago. Time to catch up. 13.8 billion years ago, all the matter and energy contained within our Universe […]
It’s one of cosmology’s biggest unsolved mysteries. The strongest argument against it may have just evaporated. The ultimate goal of cosmology contains the greatest ambition of any scientific field: to […]
Maybe, but that probably doesn’t mean what you think it does. Of all the unsolved puzzles in the Universe, perhaps the most confounding is the dark matter problem. If we look […]
As more data comes in, the puzzle gets deeper and deeper. Whenever you set out to solve a problem, there are a series of steps you have to take in order […]
You’ve seen a black hole’s event horizon for the first time thanks to them. But they’re only getting started. Earlier this year, 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration revealed the first […]