The Universe didn't begin with a bang, but with an inflationary "whoosh" that came before. Here are the biggest questions that still remain.
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In the infant Universe, particle physics reigned supreme.
The combination of charge conjugation, parity, and time-reversal symmetry is known as CPT. And it must never be broken. Ever.
With a massive, charged nucleus orbited by tiny electrons, atoms are such simple objects. Miraculously, they make up everything we know.
A new measurement offers insights on the density of the mysterious force driving the Universe's expansion.
What do ghosts and anomalous galaxy rotation rates have in common? Some sci-fi enthusiasts believe the answer involves "parallel universes."
Yes, dark energy is real. Yes, distant galaxies recede faster and faster as time goes on. But the expansion rate isn't accelerating at all.
If the Universe is expanding, and the expansion is accelerating, what does that tell us about the cause of the expanding Universe?
Perhaps the whole Universe is the result of a vacuum fluctuation, originating from what we could call quantum nothingness.
Although human beings arrived on Earth just ~300,000 years ago, we've transformed the entire planet completely. Here's how we did it.
Despite billions of years of life on Earth, humans first arose only ~300,000 years ago. It took all that time to make our arrival possible.
Although mammals may be the dominant form of life today, we're relative newcomers on planet Earth. Here's our place in natural history.
For billions of years on Earth, life was limited to simple unicellular, non-differentiated organisms. In a mere flash, that changed forever.
Known as the Great Oxygenation Event, Earth froze over as oxygen accumulated in our atmosphere, nearly driving all life extinct.
Although early Earth was a molten hellscape, once it cooled, life arose almost immediately. That original chain of life remains unbroken.
By probing the Universe on atomic scales and smaller, we can reveal the entirety of the Standard Model, and with it, the quantum Universe.
Earth wasn't created until more than 9 billion years after the Big Bang. In some lucky places, life could have arisen almost right away.
Everything we observe beyond our Local Group is speeding away from us, omnidirectionally. If the Universe is expanding, where is the center?
There is no such thing as a void in the Universe.
When the hot Big Bang first occurred, the Universe reached a maximum temperature never recreated since. What was it like back then?
Some 13.8 billion years ago, the Universe became hot, dense, and filled with high-energy quanta all at once. Here's what it was like.
Cosmic inflation is the state that preceded and set up the hot Big Bang. Here's what the Universe was like during that time period.
The Universe certainly formed stars, at one point, for the very first time. But we haven't found them yet. Here's what everyone should know.
Here's what recent DESI measurements suggest — and why it's too early to update conventional predictions about the Universe's distant future.
Bang bang all over the Universe.
From before the Big Bang to Voyager 1, particle physicist Harry Cliff takes us on a whiz-bang tour of the Universe's evolution.
From ancient Greek cosmology to today's mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, explore the relentless quest to understand the Universe's invisible forces.
Since JWST first glimpsed the Universe, we've entered a new era in understanding the earliest objects in the Universe. What have we learned?
In many ways, we are still novices playing with toy models seeking to understand the stars.