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Cosmology
Some of them may have formed just 200 million years after the Big Bang. When we look out at the Universe, we’re not seeing objects as they are today, but rather […]
How can we save humanity from ourselves? In this life and this Universe, there will always be questions beyond the capabilities of humanity to answer. There’s so much that we’ve […]
The history of the Universe is forever imprinted in our own bodies. We can learn a lot about the history of the Universe just by looking at each of our own […]
There’s a boundary to how far back we can observe everything that exists. Despite everything we’ve learned about our Universe, there are many existential questions that remain unanswered. We don’t know […]
How quickly is it expanding today, and how does that expansion rate change over time? What is the Universe made of? How quickly is it expanding today, and how does that […]
Our galactic home in the cosmos — the Milky Way — is only one of two trillion galaxies in the observable Universe. Our galactic home in the cosmos — the Milky Way — is merely one among the […]
Without quantum physics, the Sun wouldn’t shine at all. Earth, as we know it, is only teeming with life because of the influence of our Sun. Its light and heat provides […]
5 years ago, LIGO detected our first gravitational waves here on Earth. Next decade, LISA will start seeing them from space. When it comes to gravitational waves, our terrestrial laser interferometers […]
We still don’t know how it came to be this way. Every once in a while, we find an object in the Universe that completely mystifies us. For generations, astronomers have […]
The Standard Model and General Relativity can’t be all there is. But how will we discover what lies beyond them? One of the biggest problems with physics is that, apart from […]
The theoretical reasons to expect it are compelling, but the technology required to detect it is unfathomable. All throughout our galaxy, millions of black holes of a variety of masses […]
There’s a lot left to understand, ponder, and investigate. And there always will be. For hundreds of thousands of years — nearly all of human history — we had no definitive answers to some of […]
CERN’s bold new proposal has physicists confronting the biggest question of all: is building a new collider worth it? If you want to discover anything novel about the natural, physical […]
Without a little help from Einstein, we couldn’t have made this discovery. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, currently celebrating its 30th anniversary, still churns out novel discoveries. The Hubble eXtreme Deep […]
This year’s June solstice coincides with a new Moon and an annular solar eclipse. Here’s how rare it truly is. As the Earth orbits the Sun, it rotates on its axis. […]
One look at the uncertainties and the assumptions changes the story tremendously. Is there intelligent life out there in the Milky Way beyond our own Solar System? If so, how […]
Nothing in the Universe can travel faster than the speed of light. So how does space itself do it? One of the fundamental rules we all learn in physics — set forth by […]
Solid, liquid, and gas are the three everyone learns. Plasma is the fourth. But there are two more, and they’re fascinating. How many states of matter are there? When you […]
In 2011, a bizarre, green object was discovered. At long last, we finally understand why. One of astronomy’s biggest surprises came in 2007, when a mysterious green object was found. […]
We’re looking back farther in time than ever before. Here’s what we’re finding. Even today, the Universe is forming enormous numbers of new stars: from various nebulae throughout our galaxy to […]
It happened 13.8 billion years ago, so why hasn’t the radiation all passed over us by now? For the past 13.8 billion years, our Universe has been expanding, cooling, and gravitating. […]
They said the “missing half” of the Universe’s matter was just found. But what they found barely makes a dent to the big picture. When we look up into the great […]
The origin of the 3rd element on the periodic table was one of the great cosmic mysteries. We just solved it. How did we form the elements that pervade the Universe […]
There’s some amazing science happening at the South Pole, but some very grandiose claims being made. What’s actually going on? For some of us, the idea of parallel Universes spark our […]
Mathematics is the most useful tool we have for understanding the Universe. But it doesn’t answer to anything on its own. At the frontiers of theoretical physics, many of the most […]
If you traveled in a straight line for far enough, would you come back to where you started? If you were to set out on a journey from anywhere on Earth’s […]
Find a clear western horizon after sunset, and this ‘triple treat’ of a dance can be yours. Every once in a while, the night sky provides a spectacular feast for our […]
There are three things your new theory must do in order to be taken seriously as science. This one’s 0-for-3. Every once in a while, a revolutionary idea comes along that […]
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. […]
On the largest scales, dark matter holds the Universe together. But on small ones, it helps reveal exactly what it is… and isn’t! Dark matter is often thought of as the […]