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Dark Matter
Dark matter is one of the most puzzling, unintuitive concepts in all of physics. But we still need it. Our Universe isn’t like us. While we’re made of atoms, and other […]
The Universe began almost perfectly uniform, while today, it’s anything but. Here’s how we grew up. One of the strangest facts about the Universe is how dramatically its changed over time. […]
For more than 10 billion years, the star-formation rate across the Universe has been plummeting. Here’s the story. Take a look at a wide variety of galaxies in the Universe, and […]
The answer has nothing at all to do with the Higgs boson. In this Universe, there are very few fundamental properties that cannot be derived from something simpler. The rules governing […]
Representation matters. Meet five stellar women in physics who were unjustly denied their place in history. Nobel season is now over, with another year in the books of celebrating the scientists […]
They may have arisen less than 200 million years after the Big Bang, but the Universe was a very different place back then. When you look out beyond the Milky Way […]
Finding the particle we assume is responsible for dark matter has always been a guessing game. We guessed wrong. You can’t get mad at a team for trying the improbable, hoping […]
NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory has shown us the Universe like nothing else ever before. When it comes to the Universe, it mainly generates X-rays through high-temperature heating. X-rays from Chandra reveal […]
If all you see is low-energy light in a myriad of directions, you can’t be sure. But this light comes from the Big Bang. There are a lot of things that […]
Shortly after the Big Bang, the Universe became completely dark. The first stars, when they ignited, changed everything. For perhaps 100 million years, the Universe was devoid of stars. The […]
Dark matter is our leading theory for a reason. New, detailed studies of the smallest galaxies could kill off the most studied alternative. When you look out at the Universe, […]
Different measurements of the Universe’s rate of expansion give inconsistent results. But this simple solution could fix everything. In 1915, Einstein’s theory of General Relativity gave us a brand new […]
With every second that goes by, tens of thousands of star disappear from our reach. And it’s getting worse. It’s been nearly a century since scientists first theorized that the Universe […]
The Universe was born with equal amounts of matter and antimatter. How did matter win? 13.8 billion years ago, at the moment of the Big Bang, the Universe was the hottest […]
If we know how big the observable Universe is, why can’t we figure out how big the unobservable part is? 13.8 billion years ago, the Big Bang occurred. The Universe was […]
There’s a halo of dark matter permeating every galaxy, and that means its particles pass through us, too. The Universe, despite all the planets, stars, gas, dust, galaxies, and more we […]
Dark energy is pushing distant galaxies apart from one another at an increasing rate. If the Big Rip hypothesis is true, things will only get worse from here. One of the […]
Many hoped we could do without dark matter. On cosmic scales, the evidence has finally spoken. For over 40 years, scientists have argued over dark matter’s existence. The extended rotation curve […]
The Universe is expanding, but different techniques can’t agree on how fast. No matter what, something major has got to give. Look out at a distant galaxy, and you’ll see it […]
Even before we have the James Webb Space Telescope, a controversy over when the first stars formed is growing. As far back as our most powerful telescopes have ever looked, we’ve […]
We see matter, but not antimatter, in our Universe. Could black holes be the answer? One of the greatest cosmic puzzles in our entire Universe is why there’s so much more […]
The picture itself is breathtaking. But what we learn is truly eye-opening. Galaxy clusters, like the massive one captured here by Hubble, PLCK G004.5–19.5, impress not just for their looks, […]
Among the general public, people compare it to the aether, phlogiston, or epicycles. Yet almost all astronomers are certain: dark matter and dark energy exist. Here’s why. If you go by […]
It’s the first, most naive question you might think to ask. The solution is a lot more complicated than you imagine. According to a large amount of evidence, the overwhelming majority […]
There have been a lot of public advocates from the “no dark matter” camp, getting lots of popular attention. But the Universe still needs dark matter. Here’s why. If you took […]
There are many arguments over what makes a theory beautiful, elegant, or compelling. But in the face of data, predictive power is everything. When you look at any phenomenon in […]
A cosmic controversy is back, and at least one camp — perhaps both — is making an unidentified error. Ever since Hubble first discovered the relationship between a galaxy’s distance and its motion away […]
Out of five vital questions, which one should we most desire the answer to? Despite all we’ve learned about physics, science, and the Universe before us, there are still some incredibly […]
We’ve come so far since 2015; what do we know about dark matter now that we didn’t know then? Back in 2015, the dark matter situation was pretty straightforward: the large-scale […]
There’s so much that we’ve discovered, looking as deeply as possible into the void. But what are we missing? Start with the laws of physics, a Universe full of a specific […]