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Universe Expansion
Massive objects like black holes, stars, and rogue planets routinely pass near our Solar System. An ensuing comet storm could destroy us.
There may be a symmetrical interdependence between order and chaos.
When the Universe was first born, the ingredients necessary for life were nowhere to be found. Only our "lucky stars" enabled our existence.
We can reasonably say that we understand the history of the Universe within one-trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. That's not good enough.
Archaeologists can learn how societies lived by studying what they left behind when they died. Astronomers are doing much the same thing.
A new, unexpected brightening, just 3 years after a massive dimming event, has astronomers watching Betelgeuse. Is a supernova imminent?
The odds are slim, but the consequences would be literally world-ending. There really is a chance of a black hole devouring the Earth.
The problem of the electroweak horizon haunts the standard model of cosmology and beckons us to ask how deep a rethink the model may need.
Contrary to common experience, not everything needs a medium to travel through. Overcoming that assumption removes the need for an aether.
Back in 1990, we hadn't discovered a single planet outside of our Solar System. Here are 10 facts that would've surprised every astronomer.
The nearby, bright star Fomalhaut had the first optically imaged planetary candidate. Using JWST's eyes, astronomers found so much more.
Before there were planets, stars, and galaxies, before even neutral atoms or stable protons, there was the Big Bang. How did we prove it?
The standard model of cosmology has a big new problem: Some galaxies seem to be too old.
Einstein's relativity overthrew the notion of absolute space and time, replacing them with a spacetime fabric. But is spacetime truly real?
What began as an annoyance ended as a Nobel Prize-winning discovery about the Big Bang and the origin of the Universe.
Many planets will eventually be devoured by their parent star. For the first time, we caught a star in the act, eating its innermost planet!
The conservation of energy is one of the most fundamental laws governing our reality. But in the expanding Universe, that's just not true.
These high-mass, rapidly star-forming galaxies have called modern cosmology into question. But hi-res simulations show no tension at all.
All forms of energy affect the expanding Universe. But if matter and radiation slow the expansion down, how does dark energy speed it up?
How do physicists solve a problem like entropy?
The best evidence for dark matter is astrophysical and indirect. Do new lensing observations point to ultra-light, wave-like dark matter?
Once the initial blaze of heat dissipated, the constituent particles of atoms were free to bind.
Quantum uncertainty and wave-particle duality are big features of quantum physics. But without Pauli's rule, our Universe wouldn't exist.
The cosmic microwave background offers clues.
Finding out how the Universe grew up was the biggest science goal of JWST. This ultra-early proto-galaxy cluster is one amazing discovery.
From quarks and gluons to giant galaxy clusters, everything that exists in our Universe is determined by what is (and isn't) bound together.
The LHC has a long, productive life ahead of it. An upgraded version, called the “High Luminosity LHC,” will be available in 2028.
JWST has brought us more distant views of the early Universe than ever before. Is the Big Bang, and all of modern cosmology, in trouble?
Cosmologists are largely still in the dark about the forces that drive the Universe.
What would become the Big Bang model started from a crucial idea: that the young Universe was denser and hotter.