Cosmology

Cosmology

a group of open doors in front of a blue sky.
The multiverse is an idea that has gained a lot of traction in popular culture. But what does science have to say about it?
cosmic epochs lookback hubble 13.8 billion
With a finite 13.8 billion years having passed since the Big Bang, there's an edge to what we can see: the cosmic horizon. What's it like?
a clock that is in the middle of a picture.
If the evolution of the Universe is a movie, what happens when we rewind it all the way backward?
a blurry photo of a city street at night.
Time gets a little strange as you approach the speed of light.
an astronaut contemplates a black hole
That scary swirling void from which nothing can escape is our perfect universal translation tool.
JWST CEERS 1 hour field
Many galaxies really are ultra-distant, but some are just intrinsically red or dusty. Only with spectroscopy can JWST tell which is which.
DUNE neutrino detectors
If there are three neutrino species, all with different masses, then how is energy conserved when they oscillate from one flavor to another?
Albert Einstein and Isidor Kohn
How scientists found out that we live in a cosmic aquarium.
nasa merge black hole
When supermassive black holes merge, they emit more energy than anything else to occur in our Universe except the Big Bang.
pi day cover image
It's the best-known transcendental number of all-time, and March 14 (3/14 in many countries) is the perfect time to celebrate Pi (π) Day!
crab pulsar remnant
We can't go back to the Big Bang, nor ahead to the heat death of the Universe. Nevertheless, here are today's natural temperature extremes.
quantum entanglement qubit ER = EPR
Two very different ideas, wormholes and quantum entanglement, might be fundamentally related. What would "ER = EPR" mean for our Universe?
Not even Einstein immediately knew the power of the equations he gave us.
regions of the universe
The zero-point energy of empty space is not zero. Even with all the physics we know, we have no idea how to calculate what it ought to be.
planetary nebulae infrared spitzer
What kind of object will you form? What will its fate be? How long will a star live? Almost everything is determined by mass alone.
Great Pyramid
A non-invasive method for looking inside structures is solving mysteries about the ancient pyramid.
borexino
If you're a massless particle, you must always move at light speed. If you have mass, you must go slower. So why aren't any neutrinos slow?
universe bulk volume brane dimension
Unless you confront your theory with what's actually out there in the Universe, you're playing in the sandbox, not engaging in science.
NASA spitzer infrared
JWST's revolutionary views arrive in high-resolution at infrared wavelengths. Without NASA's Spitzer first, it wouldn't have been possible.
Drake equation
The Fermi paradox (along with the subsequent Drake equation) is so difficult that even brilliant thinkers can make little dent in it.
dark energy
Dark energy is one of the biggest mysteries in all the Universe. Is there some way to avoid "having to live with it?"
Nothing in this Universe is eternal — not even the stars.
"The School of Athens" by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino
Though ultimately incorrect, the ancient Greek philosophers blazed a conceptual trail for humankind to understand the nature of reality.
Roger Penrose conformal cyclic cosmology
Nobel Laureate Roger Penrose, famed for his work on black holes, claims we've seen evidence from a prior Universe. Only, we haven't.
UNCOVER NIRCam mosaic
An incredible composite image of Pandora's Cluster, Abell 2744, simultaneously showcases both our impressive knowledge and vast ignorance.
EHT event horizons
Since its observation discovery in the 1990s, dark energy has been one of science's biggest mysteries. Could black holes be the cause?
When you combine the Uncertainty Principle with Einstein's famous equation, you get a mind-blowing result: Particles can come from nothing.
entanglement across space
Are quantum fields real, or are they simply calculational tools? These 3 experiments show that if energy is real, so are quantum fields.