From the explosions themselves to their unique and vibrant colors, the fireworks displays we adore require quantum physics.
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Since dark matter eludes detection, the mission will target sources of light that are sensitive to it.
Today, our observable Universe extends for 46 billion light-years in all directions. But early on in our history, things were much smaller.
Across all wavelengths of light, the Sun is brighter than the Moon. Until we went to the highest energies and saw a gamma-ray surprise.
Is the Universe finite or infinite? Does it go on forever or loop back on itself? Here’s what would happen if you traveled forever.
Everything we observe beyond our Local Group is speeding away from us, omnidirectionally. If the Universe is expanding, where is the center?
Although many of Einstein’s papers revolutionized physics, there’s one Einsteinian advance, generally, that towers over all the rest.
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.
The visible Universe extends 46.1 billion light-years from us, while we’ve probed scales down to as small as ~10^-19 meters.
Traveling back in time is a staple of science fiction movies. But according to Einstein, it’s a physical possibility that’s truly allowed.
Observations of an enormous cosmic structure, dubbed the “Big Ring,” seem to violate the Copernican principle.
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.
For some reason, when we talk about the age of stars, galaxies, and the Universe, we use “years” to measure time. Can we do better?
Some 55 million light-years away lies the giant galaxy Messier 87. Its supermassive black hole, inside and out, looks better than ever.
For thousands of years, humanity had no idea how far away the stars were. In the 1600s, Newton, Huygens, and Hooke all claimed to get there.
The last infant stars are finishing their formation inside these pillars of gas. The evaporation of those columns is almost complete.
Gamma-ray bursts are so powerful they could vaporize the Earth from 200 light-years away. Recreating them in the lab is not easy.
Everything everywhere all at once.
Thanks to observations of gravitational waves, scientists were able to settle a longstanding debate over the speed of gravity.
Astronomers claim to have found structures so large, they shouldn’t exist. With such biased, incomplete observations, perhaps they don’t.
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.
The Bullet Cluster has, for nearly 20 years, been hailed as an empirical “proof” of dark matter. Can their detractors explain it away?
In 1667, a core-collapse supernova happened right here in the Milky Way, invisible to all humans. ~350 years later, here’s what JWST sees.
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.
Early on, only matter and radiation were important for the expanding Universe. After a few billion years, dark energy changed everything.
In the 20th century, many options abounded as to our cosmic origins. Today, only the Big Bang survives, thanks to this critical evidence.
Eyes with lower pigment (blue or grey eyes) don’t need to absorb as much light as brown or dark eyes before this information reaches the retinal cells. This might provide light-eyed people with some resilience to SAD.
The “little red dots” were touted as being too massive, too early, for cosmology to explain. With new knowledge, everything adds up.
Even after the first stars form, those overdense regions gravitationally attract matter and also merge. Here’s how they grow into galaxies.
Some constants, like the speed of light, exist with no underlying explanation. How many “fundamental constants” does our Universe require?