The Universe is dark, but the distorted light reveals its presence. When we look at the objects in the Universe, the mass just doesn’t add up. A galaxy that was […]
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13.8 billion years ago, the hot Big Bang gave rise to the Universe we know. Here’s why the reverse, a Big Crunch, isn’t how it will end.
Even after our merger with Andromeda, we might retain our spiral shape for trillions of years. You probably don’t think about it very often, but the Milky Way galaxy won’t remain […]
Named M51-ULS-1b, it’s certainly a curious astronomical event. But the evidence is far too weak to conclude “planet.”
Which is good, because if they do, they violate the cosmological principle. In theory, the Universe should be the same, on average, everywhere. A simulation of the large-scale structure of […]
The Universe is expanding, and the Hubble constant tells us how fast. But how can it be a constant if the expansion is accelerating?
We have to use the right definition for the specific question we’re asking. When it comes to the Universe, we frequently characterize objects by examining and reporting on their physical […]
Catch Saturn at its biggest and brightest, and view its rings while you still can. Right now, in Earth’s skies, Saturn appears at its biggest and brightest. A view of tonight’s […]
In all the Universe, only a few particles are eternally stable. The photon, the quantum of light, has an infinite lifetime. Or does it?
You can lead an overconfident chatbot to expert knowledge, but can it actually learn and assimilate new information?
The study identified superhabitable planets outside of our solar system.
The first Earth-sized planet without a parent star has just been discovered. For countless millennia, planets beyond our Solar System were mere speculation. Today, we know of over 4,000 confirmed […]
Spirals, ellipticals, and irregulars are all more common than ring galaxies. At last, we know how these ultra-rare objects are made.
The recently discovered Oort cloud comet, Bernardinelli–Bernstein, has the largest known nucleus: 119 km. Here’s what it could do to Earth.
Forget about the terawatt lasers we’re making on Earth. This natural one is thousands of times more powerful than the Sun.
How we’re seeing black holes as never before… and a whole lot more. It was only back in the early 2000s that scientists were struggling to identify and weigh the small […]
When you look at the Universe in an entirely new way, you sometimes find what you could never have anticipated. Almost exactly one year ago today, the Event Horizon Telescope […]
Researchers discover strange behavior in magnetars, ultra-powerful magnetic stars.
The way to understand the earliest moments of creation is to recreate those conditions and study them. Why would we stop now?
An unprecedented number of new satellites threatens the night sky as we know it. Will we act in time to save it?
Shocked city dwellers who stared at it were blinded instantly, then the entire city caught fire.
There’s more light than we can account for, and we’ve just measured it robustly for the first time. When we look out at the darkest night skies available on Earth, even […]
A gigantic star makes off during an eight-year gap in observations.
Science is an ongoing flirtation with the unknown.
Over the past 30 years, we’ve revolutionized what we know about the Universe. But we couldn’t have done it without these lessons. On April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope rocketed […]
In theory, the fabric of space could have been curved in any way imaginable. So why is the Universe flat when we measure it?
And, at some point, did the Milky Way lose ours? There are some 400 billion objects flying through the Milky Way galaxy with enough mass that — if they were all made of […]
Black holes are the darkest objects of all. But are they made of dark matter? When it comes to the Universe, few objects are more compelling, fascinating, or extreme than black […]
Humans are more likely to have “first contact” with an advanced alien civilization, according to a recent NASA-funded paper.