For perhaps 100 million years, there were no stars in the Universe. What was it like then? The earliest stages of the Universe were extraordinarily eventful in bringing us about. Cosmic […]
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We can go to deeper and deeper levels, finding more fundamental quantities as we do. But is there a truly fundamental quantity? What is the Universe, at a fundamental level, […]
Forget Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, Pilot Waves and all the others. What you’re left with is reality. When it comes to understanding the Universe, scientists have traditionally taken two approaches in tandem with […]
The eruption quickly killed those caught in its intense wake.
We often think only of grown ups taking pills, this study reminds us children can take them too.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft taught us more than we ever imagined about Saturn. Could we do something similar for Uranus and Neptune? From where we are in the Solar System, looking out […]
It has already found several bizarre planets outside of our solar system.
13.8 billion years isn’t close to enough time, but if we wait long enough, even our Sun will become one. The Big Bang happened approximately 13.8 billion years ago, and it […]
Not only can’t astronomers and planetary scientists agree, but the IAU made it worse for everyone. If you were alive in 2006, you likely remember a momentous event in astronomy: […]
For billions of years, dark energy couldn’t have been detected. Now, it’s everywhere we look. When we look out at the ultra-distant Universe, billion of light-years away, we’re seeing it as […]
Giving our solar system a “slap in the face.”
The world’s greatest clockmaker sent a clock to the new world, and everything went haywire. The reason why will shock you. For millennia, humanity’s one-and-only reliable way to keep time was […]
The reason why is simple, and should apply to every solar system like our own. On January 3rd, 2019, Earth reached the point in its orbit where it’s at its closest […]
If we were in a place like the Coma Cluster instead of the Local Group, we’d already be dead. In a living spiral galaxy, like the Milky Way, the rich gas […]
Turns out pushups are more telling than treadmill tests when it comes to cardiovascular health.
A massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way and a single star did it.
If everything in nature is made of quantum fields at its core, how do we wind up with particles at all? What is our Universe made out of? At a fundamental […]
Just because you can design an experiment to test for something doesn’t mean you should trust the results. Is there another Universe out there? The Universe we know and inhabit, the […]
But we shouldn’t give up on direct detection. Here’s why. Dark matter is not only the most abundant form of matter in the Universe, it’s also the most mysterious. Whereas all […]
From the inflationary state that preceded the Big Bang to our cold, lonely, dark energy-dominated fate, the Universe goes through six different eras. We’re living in the last one already. The […]
The year was fraught to say the least. Riots in the streets, engagement abroad in a long-fought war, and an encroaching sense that the fabric that knits us together is […]
Technology’s rapid advances may slow down, limiting our possibilities.
A case for looking beyond the planetary scientist’s (or even the astronomer’s) definition. Ever since 2006, when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially defined the term planet — introducing the term ‘dwarf […]
There really is a cosmic conundrum about how fast the Universe is expanding. Changing its age won’t help. One of the most surprising and interesting discoveries of the 21st century is […]
Time to build a Corellian shipyard?
In the search for fundamental truths in our Universe, one of the biggest questions, “are space and time continuous or discrete,” remains unanswered. Throughout the history of science, one of […]
Sabine Hossenfeder has some problems with how it’s practiced today.
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Dark matter is one of the most puzzling, unintuitive concepts in all of physics. But we still need it. Our Universe isn’t like us. While we’re made of atoms, and other […]
In all the years of NASA, we’ve never touched the Sun before. Here’s why it’s so hard. This past weekend, NASA successfully launched the Parker Solar Probe: the first spacecraft that […]