The Big Bang is our accepted origin of the Universe. But is there another possibility? Since the mid-1960s and the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background, the Big Bang has […]
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Deniers will never stop misleading others. Here’s the truth. Every so often, advocates of a fringe theory — one that doesn’t fit the evidence as well as the mainstream theory — do what they can […]
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 […]
All scientific theories, at some level, are wrong. That’s why consensus is so vital. There are two important and common words that, when used scientifically, have a very different meaning than […]
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 […]
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 […]
And what might we learn as we collect new, never-before-seen data? If you took one of history’s top scientists from 100 years ago and dropped them into today’s world, what […]
Almost certainly not. Here’s the science of why. The Universe, as we know it, simply doesn’t add up. On the one hand, we can look out on a cosmic scale and […]
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 […]
She’s not a scientist, an expert, or even an adult. But she’s got one good lesson to teach us all. Like most people on Earth, Greta Thunberg is not a climate […]
There’s no such thing as a theory that’s too beautiful to be wrong, if it doesn’t agree with experiment. The history of physics is filled with great ideas that you’ve […]
BICEP2 scientist Brian Keating’s new book is honest and insightful, but just as notable for what it fails to recognize. Imagine what it’s like to be a scientist working on […]
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 […]
Our dark matter searches have yet to yield a robust detection. Could we be looking in all the wrong places? There’s perhaps no more fundamental question to ask than, “what is […]
If your favorite theory made the list, you might want to consider a new favorite to bet on. “Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great […]
From a Universe that went no bigger than our Milky Way to the trillions of galaxies in our expanding Universe, our knowledge increased one step at a time. “Gamow was fantastic […]
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 […]
Holes, lines, or even walls in space aren’t just fiction; they could actually exist! “Weakness of character is the only defect which cannot be amended.” –Francois de La Rochefoucauld The biggest lesson […]
If black holes lose information in an event horizon, then do we have a paradox with our cosmic horizon? “The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons.” –Edwin Hubble […]
And just what did come before — way before — the Big Bang? “We are part of the universe that has developed a remarkable ability: We can hold an image of the world in our […]
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 […]
Before the Big Bang… after the Big Freeze… will everything look the same? “What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakeable, unforgettable, unshamable, elemental as […]
It’s the most fundamental fabric of the Universe itself. But how does it work? “‘Space-time’ — that hideous hybrid whose very hyphen looks phoney.” –Vladimir Nabokov When it comes to understanding the Universe, there […]
We might have been spared the worst of Hurricane Matthew, but the underlying science is informative at any time! “She didn’t even know what she’d do when she got back to […]
If you’re looking for a point in space, the answer is going to shock you. “The world you see, nature’s greatest and most glorious creation, and the human mind which gazes […]
And could every black hole our Universe creates give rise to a baby Universe itself? “Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope,tied between beast and overman — a rope […]
Not the show, the actual scientific theory itself! “Gamow was fantastic in his ideas. He was right, he was wrong. More often wrong than right. Always interesting; … and when his idea […]