Search Results

It’s not breaking news that the universe is slowly dying. It is significant that scientists have been able to finally measure the degree to which it’s dying. Let’s just say you should push up any appointments you might have 100 billion years from now.

What the world’s most powerful collider found, and may yet still find. “Innovation is taking two things that already exist and putting them together in a new way.” –Tom Freston […]

How new developments in measuring the highest-energy particles and earliest signals from the Universe are teaching us what all this is. Big questions in the field of Cosmology are often […]

The Universe is full of surprises. These are the biggest, plus what they mean. “Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.” –Boris Pasternak So it is in […]

How many does it take to give us our Universe, and what’s left unexplained? “The joy of life consists in the exercise of one’s energies, continual growth, constant change, the […]

The scariest of all possible fates results in the ultimate destruction of everything that ever was or will be. Image credit: Boren-Simon 2.8–8 ED POWERNEWT Astrograph Image Gallery. “Why do […]

After the CMB, before the first stars, there was nothing to see. Or was there? “[I]f there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we […]

Can the world’s most fantastic and speculative “theory of everything” candidate shed light on the Universe’s most invisible objects? “I just think too many nice things have happened in string […]

It’s been 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang, but our observable Universe is much bigger than just 13.8 billion light years! Image credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, […]

The glorious meteor shower peaking this week is the most consistent, year after year. Here’s why. “Men of genius are often dull and inert in society; as the blazing meteor, […]

We claim to know the Universe’s history to incredible precision. But is this justified? “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.”-Albert Einstein We’ve reached […]

Our Milky Way is only the second-largest galaxy in our local group. Take an interactive dive into the biggest! “He who would search for pearls must dive below.” –John Dryden […]

According to relativity, there’s no universal frame of reference. But the Big Bang gave us one anyway. “The slow philosophy is not about doing everything in tortoise mode. It’s less […]

How one of the first tests of special relativity might lead to the greatest particle accelerator of all-time. “One feels that the past stays the way you left it, whereas […]

If we came to be just a few billion years earlier, we’d never know. Image credit: Jean-Charles Cuillandre (CFHT) & Giovanni Anselmi (Coelum Astronomia), Hawaiian Starlight. “After all the ‘Universe’ […]

We don’t know the nature of either dark matter or dark energy: 95% of our Universe. Does that mean the Big Bang is in doubt? Image credit: wiseGEEK, © 2003 — 2014 […]

The fastest way to make interstellar travel a reality might not be only science fiction for long! It is humanity’s longstanding dream to venture to the stars. We long to […]

Sometimes, it’s the most unexpected ingredients that give rise to the greatest results in the end. “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” –Joseph Campbell When you […]

NASA represents a full 50% of the world’s expenditures on space science & exploration. What should we expect from it? “This Administration has never really faced up to where we […]

Created by physicists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago, a machine called the Holometer will determine if the universe is merely a series of bits or if a more substantial material reality exists.

Is there another version of you somewhere out there in a parallel Universe? “Go then, there are other worlds than these.” –Stephen King, The Dark Tower One of the most […]

The largest structures in the Universe are phantasms, in the process of self-destructing. Image credit: NASA, N. Benitez (JHU), T. Broadhurst (Racah Institute of Physics/The Hebrew University), H. Ford (JHU), […]

Radiation gets stretched to longer and longer wavelengths as space itself expands, but what happens to matter? “The trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.” –Molière It’s […]

There are three things an idea must do to become a full-fledged scientific theory. How does the Multiverse stack up? “It’s hard to build models of inflation that don’t lead […]

Is looking for radio transmissions in space like claiming the lack of smoke signals means there are no modern humans? “[W]hat Fermi immediately realized was that the aliens have had […]

If you knew nothing, Jon Snow, here’s what it’s doing in five simple steps. “Let them see that their words can cut you and you’ll never be free of the […]

Saw “Solar System Questions” by xkcd? Here’s what science thinks it knows. “Put two ships in the open sea, without wind or tide, and, at last, they will come together. […]

While 2015 gives us all a fresh start, we can consider the Big Bang until today to be “One Universe Year.” What comes next? “And now we welcome the new […]

For songwriter and a scientist alike, the delight is in peering into the unknown, reaching in, and pulling some strange, new thing out of the darkness.

The hope that humans can use wisdom and technology to prevent a bleak future for life on Earth is overly optimistic. It falsely presumes that we can use wisdom to overcome instincts.