In many ways, we are still novices playing with toy models seeking to understand the stars.
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With no other galaxies in its vicinity for ~100 million light-years in all directions, it's as isolated and lonely as a galaxy can be.
What would become the Big Bang model started from a crucial idea: that the young Universe was denser and hotter.
After 15 years of monitoring 68 objects known as millisecond pulsars, we've found the Universe's background gravitational wave signal!
The first observational evidence showing the Universe is expanding is 100 years old now: in 2023. Here's the story of its 100th anniversary.
From a photon's viewpoint, the Universe is timeless and dimensionless.
From the earliest stages of the hot Big Bang (and even before) to our dark energy-dominated present, how and when did the Universe grow up?
The most common element in the Universe, vital for forming new stars, is hydrogen. But there's a finite amount of it; what if we run out?
There are so many problems, all across planet Earth, that harm and threaten humanity. Why invest in researching the Universe?
Is information intrinsic in our universe? NASA’s Michelle Thaller explains.
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A proponent of panpsychism argues moral truth is inherent in consciousness.
A cute mathematical trick can "rescale" the Universe so that it isn't actually expanding. But can that "trick" survive all our cosmic tests?
While humanity has been skywatching since ancient times, much of our cosmic understanding has come about only recently. Very recently.
It's been 100 years since we discovered that the Universe was expanding. But if it's expanding, then what is it expanding into?
For the first time, astronomers have created a data-driven estimate for how many black holes are in our Universe: more than anyone expected.
Empty space itself, the quantum vacuum, could be in either a true, stable state or a false, unstable state. Our fate depends on the answer.
A spherical structure nearly one billion light-years wide has been spotted in the nearby Universe, dating all the way back to the Big Bang.
From quarks and gluons to giant galaxy clusters, everything that exists in our Universe is determined by what is (and isn't) bound together.
With ~400 billion stars in the Milky Way and 6-20 trillion galaxies overall, that makes for a lot of stars. But not as many as you'd think.
Your life’s memories could, in principle, be stored in the universe’s structure.
Ever since the Big Bang, cataclysmic events have released enormous amounts of energy. Here's the greatest one ever witnessed.
The visible Universe extends 46.1 billion light-years from us, while we've probed scales down to as small as ~10^-19 meters.
With a finite 13.8 billion years having passed since the Big Bang, there's an edge to what we can see: the cosmic horizon. What's it like?
Physicist Sean Carroll on entropy, complexity, and the origins of life:
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Yes, the Universe is expanding, but if you've ever wondered, "How fast is it expanding," the answer isn't in terms of a speed at all.
A deep dive into the chaotic journey of star formation.
Joseph Campbell argued that nearly every myth can be boiled down to a hero’s journey. Was he right?
Ultracold gases in the lab could help scientists better understand the universe.
Because of dark energy, distant objects speed away from us faster and faster as time goes on. How long before every galaxy is out of reach?