When you’re trying to peel back the veil obscuring the fundamental nature of matter, you have to look absolutely everywhere. Sometimes, the solution to a puzzle you’ve been stymied by […]

It’s not a question of could they, but have they? Here’s how we’ll find out. It’s no secret that fragments of asteroids, comets, and other spaceborne objects have been found here […]

Particle physics is everywhere, even in the palm of your hand. When you hold out your palm and point it towards the sky, what is it that’s interacting with your hand? […]

Our Universe cannot be described by normal matter alone. Vera Rubin’s work led the way. Ask an astrophysicist what our Universe is made of, and you’ll likely receive a shocking surprise. […]

And does it require the idea of ‘negative gravity’ in order to work? The biggest question that we’re even capable of asking, with our present knowledge and understanding of the Universe, […]

Just because you can design an experiment to test for something doesn’t mean you should trust the results. Is there another Universe out there? The Universe we know and inhabit, the […]

Not only can’t astronomers and planetary scientists agree, but the IAU made it worse for everyone. If you were alive in 2006, you likely remember a momentous event in astronomy: […]

When stars get ejected from galaxies within massive clusters, they go where the dark matter is. Dark matter is one of the greatest mysteries in the Universe, displaying its effects in […]

General Relativity has nothing to do with light or electromagnetism at all. So how to gravitational waves know to travel at the speed of light? There are two fundamental classes of […]

The quest for a quantum theory of gravity is the holy grail of physics. Here’s why it’s murkier than anyone expected. If you want to fully describe how the Universe […]

If you think nothing can move faster than light, check out this clever way to defeat that limit. Nothing can move faster than the speed of light. When Einstein set forth […]

The Planck length is a lot smaller than anything we’ve ever accessed. But is it a true limit? If you wanted to understand how our Universe operates, you’d have to examine […]

Discovered by NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory, it’s powered by a supermassive black hole. 2019 marks 20 years of NASA’s Chandra, humanity’s most powerful X-ray observatory. Artist illustration of the Chandra X-ray […]

Some galaxies might not have any dark matter. Here’s why you should care. There are two assumptions that everyone makes about the Universe for extremely good reasons, but they might not […]

A vacuum cleaner is the wrong picture. Time to bust that myth. There are no classes of object in our Universe more extreme than black holes. With so much mass present […]

Two independent techniques give precise but incompatible answers. Here’s how to resolve it. If you didn’t know anything about the Universe beyond our own galaxy, there are two different pathways you […]

An entire Universe of possibilities await stars like our own, even after they run out of fuel. One of the most profound rules in all the Universe is that nothing lasts […]

Has the mystery really been solved? Doubtful. The real science goes much deeper. For perhaps the last year or so, a small galaxy located not too far away has captivated the […]

When we think about the birth of the Universe, was time already in place? When we look at the Universe today, we know with an extraordinary amount of scientific certainty that […]

There aren’t any holes in the Universe at all. What actually exists is far more interesting. Somewhere, far away, if you believe what you read, there’s a hole in the […]

If we could see in three dimensions instead of two, we’d never have thought otherwise. Perhaps the most famous sight of a dying star is the Ring Nebula, discovered in […]

13.8 billion years isn’t close to enough time, but if we wait long enough, even our Sun will become one. The Big Bang happened approximately 13.8 billion years ago, and it […]

The solar eclipse of May 29, 1919, was the nail in the coffin of a Newtonian Universe. On May 29, 1919, the world changed forever. For hundreds of years, Isaac […]

Everything on Earth is made of atoms and their building blocks. Without this one rule, they’d never make anything interesting. Take a look around you at everything on Earth. If […]

Imagine how different our understanding of the Universe would be if we saw nothing beyond the Milky Way. Our corner of the Universe was gifted with a plethora of bright, nearby […]

And if they exist, are there alternate-reality versions of you out there, too? You’ve likely imagined it before: another Universe out there, just like this one, where all the random events […]

Even the best science imaginable has its limits. In terms of ambition, it’s hard to ask for more than to know absolutely everything there is to know about the Universe. That’s […]

Some claim that inflation isn’t science, but it sure has made some incredibly successful scientific predictions. So, you want to know how the Universe began? You’re not alone. Every other […]

Depending on how you measure it, there are two different answers that could be right. If you want to see what’s out there in the Universe, you first have to be […]

Dark matter, dark energy, inflation and the Big Bang are real, and the alternatives all fail spectacularly. If you keep up with the latest science news, you’re probably familiar with […]