In General Relativity, the fabric of space doesn’t remain static over time. Everything else depends on the details we measure. If there’s one thing we’ve experimentally determined to be a constant […]

If dark matter is fundamentally different from the normal matter we know, there should be a way to test it. Here are the results. Dark matter — despite the enormous indirect evidence for […]

Unlike most articles that are titled with a question, the answer isn’t automatically “no.” Announced on January 6, 2020, NASA’s TESS mission has just discovered its first Earth-sized, habitable zone […]

The images themselves will take your breath away, but the science we can extract from them is truly revolutionary and spectacular. Dark matter may be one of the most mysterious […]

Within the next billion years, the Magellanic Clouds might merge with our galaxy. But the new stars are already here. Within the Milky Way, there are only a few instances of […]

It’s one thing to find a galaxy that “shouldn’t exist.” It’s quite another to learn why it does. Above a certain size, spiral galaxies shouldn’t exist. A single major merger — where two […]

The age of the Universe is only 13.8 billion years, but we know that protons survive much longer. Here’s how. Since the discovery of radioactivity in the 19th century, humanity has […]

After 13.8 billion years, there’s still a whole lot that’s changing as time goes on. With each new year that comes upon us, there are a slew of new events awaiting […]

If you were to compress the entire history of the Universe into one calendar year, everything we love happens on December 31st. Our Universe has been around for 13.8 billion years […]

The Eagle Nebula, complete with the Pillars of Creation, tells a mini-version of the story of how all the Universe’s stars formed. The Eagle Nebula, found 7,000 light-years away, demonstrates how […]

It’s not a question we know enough to know the answer to, but to dismiss the possibility is scientifically baseless. There’s one question that most of us ask at some […]

If you’re wondering whether the blast wave or the radiation would kill us first, you’re asking the wrong question. As far as raw explosive power goes, no other cataclysm in […]

Astronomy’s enduring quest is to go farther, fainter, and more detailed than ever before. Here’s the edge of the cosmic frontier. Astronomers have always sought to push back the viewable […]

In the middle of a great cosmic void, a single, isolated galaxy persists amidst the darkness. It’s about to get a lot lonelier. Here in our own cosmic backyard, the […]

The NICER experiment, designed to measure neutron stars as never before, just released their first pulsar map, and it’s amazing. After typical supernovae, remnant collapsed cores of matter are left behind. […]

A fascinating mathematical structure exists that goes well beyond our common experience. Could it revolutionize physics? Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the Universe is that every particle within it — at […]

There’s real, straightforward science behind the destruction of an Alderaan-sized planet. In all of science fiction, perhaps the most iconic moment of destruction occurs in 1977’s Star Wars: A New […]

The hot Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago, and there’s no other possible answer consistent with what we know today. Conceptually, it might seem like the simplest idea in existence […]

We speak with cosmologist Dan Hooper, and ponder the literal edge of what we know about the Universe. Have you ever wondered what the first moments of our Universe were […]

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 […]

Even extremely simple configurations in General Relativity cannot be solved exactly. Here’s the science of why. It’s difficult to appreciate how revolutionary of a transformation it is to consider the Universe […]

If this discovery came in a pre-LIGO era, maybe it would have been a surprise. But in 2019, there’s no mystery at all. Did you hear that astronomers had recently […]

In science, breakthroughs don’t always begin with a ‘eureka’ moment. Sometimes, the true story is absolutely unbelievable. When it comes to our Universe’s origin story, many competing ideas once thrived. […]

Without this one ingredient, there wouldn’t be enough ‘glue’ to hold the Universe together. Of all the things in the Universe to be thankful for — the stars, planets, atoms, molecules, and […]

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 […]

The Leonid meteor shower peaks today. Its parent comet taught us where meteor showers come from. Every year, as Earth regularly orbits the Sun, meteor showers repeatedly recur. While August’s Perseids […]

For decades, one of the Big Bang’s greatest predictions was shrouded in doubt. The answer was always there on Channel 3. When it comes to the question of how our Universe […]

And if the data is good enough, we can determine that it’s accelerating directly, too, silencing the last remaining doubters. If you want to understand what the Universe is made […]

On May 9, 2016, the prior transit of Mercury occurred, and was photographed many times on a practically continuous basis by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Transits of Mercury are rare, […]

When you hear ‘quantum,’ you probably think of splitting everything into discrete, indivisible chunks. That’s not necessarily right. If you want to learn what the Universe is made out of […]