Is science about to end? Is science close to explaining everything about our Universe? Physicist Sabine Hossenfelder reacts. ▸ 5 min — with Sabine Hossenfelder
Starts With A Bang Yes, two planets really can share the same orbit Can two planets stably share the same orbit? Conventional wisdom says no, but a look at Saturn’s moons might tell a different story.
Starts With A Bang Could dark matter be made of gravitons? Dark matter hasn’t been directly detected, but some form of invisible matter is clearly gravitating. Could the graviton hold the answer?
Hard Science The case for dark matter has strengthened Though a single measurement is not enough to definitively decide the debate, this is a major win for dark matter proponents.
Starts With A Bang JWST discovers the farthest gravitational lens ever A more distant galaxy liked the lens so much that it went and put a ring on it. Here’s the science behind this remarkable cosmic object.
13.8 Jupiter at its core remains a mystery to science The classic picture of Jupiter’s great rocky core might be entirely wrong.
Starts With A Bang Without Einstein, we might have missed General Relativity Einstein’s “happiest thought” led to General Relativity’s formulation. Would a different profound insight have led us forever astray?
Starts With A Bang Could we use the Sun’s gravity to find alien life? With a telescope at just the right distance from the Sun, we could use its gravity to enhance and magnify a potentially inhabited planet.
Starts With A Bang Spacetime: is it real and physical, or just a calculational tool? Einstein’s relativity overthrew the notion of absolute space and time, replacing them with a spacetime fabric. But is spacetime truly real?
Starts With A Bang Starts With A Bang Podcast #98 – The line between star and planet Between the least massive star and most massive planet lies the mysterious brown dwarf: a class of objects that are neither star nor planet.
Hard Science Is dark matter real? Astronomy’s multi-decade mystery The key problem with the dark matter hypothesis is that nobody knows what form dark matter might take.
Starts With A Bang Starts With A Bang podcast #96 – The cosmic gravitational wave background How scientists are hearing the gravitational background “hum” of the Universe for the very first time.
Starts With A Bang What was it like when supermassive black holes arose? As early as we’ve been able to identify them, the youngest galaxies seem to have large supermassive black holes. Here’s how they were made.
Hard Science The “Big Crunch”: New dark energy data raises questions about Universe’s fate Here’s what recent DESI measurements suggest — and why it’s too early to update conventional predictions about the Universe’s distant future.
Starts With A Bang We can’t avoid a singularity inside every black hole Yes, “the laws of physics break down” at singularities. But something really weird must have happened for black holes to not possess them.
Hard Science Do Olympic bobsled and luge athletes actually do anything? The big-picture physics is simple – let gravity do its job.
Starts With A Bang Saturn’s rings outshine Saturn in new JWST image While Saturn and its moons all appear faint and cloudy to JWST, Saturn’s rings are the star of the show. Here’s the big scientific reason.
Hard Science Can cosmology untangle the universe’s most elusive mysteries? From the Big Bang to dark energy, knowledge of the cosmos has sped up in the past century — but big questions linger.
Starts With A Bang What was it like when the first stars began to shine? The Big Bang’s hot glow faded away after only a few million years, leaving the Universe dark until the first stars formed. Oh, the changes!
Hard Science Why black holes unlock the quantum majesty of the Universe That scary swirling void from which nothing can escape is our perfect universal translation tool.
Hard Science T-Minus: How to not die on (the way to) Mars The threats Mars astronauts face — and how NASA is working to solve them.
The Well I’m a chemist, and I’m building a universal robot to make life and find aliens The emergence of life in the universe is as certain as the emergence of matter, gravity, and the stars. Life is the universe developing a memory, and our chemical detection system could find it.
Hard Science In 1894, physics seemed complete. Then Kelvin spotted 2 looming “clouds” Lord Kelvin is thought to have said there was nothing new to discover in physics. His real view was the opposite.
13.8 Broken symmetry might break the standard model of cosmology 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.
Starts With A Bang The 13 scales that define our physical Universe The visible Universe extends 46.1 billion light-years from us, while we’ve probed scales down to as small as ~10^-19 meters.
Starts With A Bang Is dark matter’s “nightmare scenario” true? The great hope is that beyond the indirect, astrophysical evidence we have today, we’ll someday detect it directly. But what if we can’t?
Hard Science Is Star Trek’s warp drive possible? The concept of the warp drive is currently at odds with everything we know to be true about physics.
Starts With A Bang Time dilation is real, and your head ages faster than your feet The idea of “absolute time” was our default for millennia. But time is relative, as gravity and motion both cause time to dilate.