A single lifetime is more than enough to take you to the limits of the Universe. Right now, there are only three things limiting how far our spacecrafts can take […]
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Enough mass in one location will always create a black hole. But not all masses are possible. If you take enough mass and compress it into a small enough volume […]
If we want our conclusions to be meaningful, our data had better be robust. When it comes to the Universe, there’s a whole lot that doesn’t add up. All the matter […]
Forgetting them, at any step, can lead to unscientific conclusions. No one, not even the smartest among us, were competent scientists from the outset. The concept of science is simple […]
Demanding appropriate levels of skepticism and scrutiny isn’t cruelty, but rather demonstrates scientific integrity and intellectual honesty. Every few months, a novel headline will fly across the world, claiming to […]
When one group says “A” and another group says “B,” consider that everyone might be wrong. One of the biggest enemies of scientific truth is the setup of a false dichotomy. […]
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 […]
Scientific surprises are often how science advances. But more often than not, they’re just bad science. When you’re a scientist, getting an unexpected result can be a double-edged sword. The best […]
Distances in the expanding Universe don’t work like you’d expect. Unless, that is, you learn to think like a cosmologist. There are a few fundamental facts about the Universe — its origin, […]
Spoiler: it isn’t the end of the Universe, and it’s not likely to lead to new evidence for the Multiverse, either. On March 14, 2018, the most famous and celebrated […]
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 […]
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 […]
One of cosmic inflation’s cofounders came out against it, calling it not even science. But it is… and so much more. “There’s no obvious reason to assume that the very same […]
A live-blog event happened a week ago, but you can catch the entire thing anew here, right now! “We have never observed infinity in nature. Whenever you have infinities in […]
Einstein’s first great revolution happened way back in 1905. It still puzzles many amateurs and professionals alike even today. “Each ray of light moves in the coordinate system ‘at rest’ with […]
Even if the Universe grows to infinity, there might not be enough space to hold all the possibilities. “We are actually living in a million parallel realities every single minute.” –Marina […]
46 billion light years in all directions in just 13.8 billion years? Here’s how it’s done! “They say the universe is expanding. That should help with the traffic.” –Steven Wright There are […]
Some fear we are meddling with forces too powerful for human control.
They’re judged to be “standard candles” and the greatest cosmic distance indicators. What if they’re not so standard? “It’s everywhere, really. It’s between the galaxies. It is in this room. […]
And if the Universe is expanding, does that mean these ripples can break the speed of light? “Einstein’s gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest single achievement of […]
It’s getting bigger over time, but is there anything it’s displacing, or expanding into? “Mathematicians deal with possible worlds, with an infinite number of logically consistent systems. Observers explore the […]
It’s a wonderful potential technology for going interstellar. But in your lifetime? Don’t hold your breath. “Greatness is not in where we stand, but in what direction we are moving. We […]
A live-blog event of a fabulous public lecture given by Katie Freese on the unseen components in our Universe. “If you take everything we know… it only adds up to […]
And what it means if we don’t see gravitational waves from inflation in the next 5–10 years. “The paradigm of physics — with its interplay of data, theory and prediction — is the most powerful […]
And because of it, we can learn about quantum entanglement across a black hole’s event horizon. This article was contributed to Starts With A Bang by Sabine Hossenfelder, whose blog, Backreaction, […]
Is everything astonishingly simple, though? Or is this a grandiose claim that falls flat when confronted with the evidence? “My main interest is the problem of the singularity. If we […]
A “speculative” theory no more; it’s had four of them confirmed. “Scientific ideas should be simple, explanatory, predictive. The inflationary multiverse as currently understood appears to have none of those […]
If String Theory has nothing to do with reality, what are our options? “I just think too many nice things have happened in string theory for it to be all […]
How do we know that the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background aren’t polluted by everything Hubble reveals? “Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven,Blossomed the lovely […]
Before the first star ever formed, the Universe was filled with light. But how? “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light […]