Among the general public, people compare it to the aether, phlogiston, or epicycles. Yet almost all astronomers are certain: dark matter and dark energy exist. Here’s why. If you go by […]
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Billions of years ago, the Milky Way would have been unrecognizable. Here’s how it took its modern shape. The Milky Way galaxy may be just one of trillions in the observable […]
A set of new studies that used large-scale computer simulations found that life might be more common throughout other universes than previously thought.
Many hoped we could do without dark matter. On cosmic scales, the evidence has finally spoken. For over 40 years, scientists have argued over dark matter’s existence. The extended rotation curve […]
As the Event Horizon Telescope prepares to release its first results, we can expect not just one, but two black hole images. What does a black hole actually look like? For […]
We aren’t lunarly exclusive. Earth has a few minimoons whizzing around us, including one that comes back into our orbit every 20 years or so.
Hubble, even at its best, only reveals perhaps 10% of what’s out there. Here’s how we get the rest. When you gaze up at the night sky, through the veil of […]
And if we did, what would happen if you fell in? Out in the countryside of rural America, you can find all sorts of attractions that are too-good-to-be-true. One of the […]
There are plenty of questions we don’t know the answer to. With quantum gravity, they might be solved! This article is written by Sabine Hossenfelder. Sabine is a theoretical physicist specialized […]
Lasers, mirrors, and computational advances can all work together to push ground-based astronomy past even the limits of Hubble. One of the most profoundly remarkable properties about our atmosphere is that […]
To help dramatize the need for us to open our minds about the potential nature of extraterrestrial life, experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats has built instruments and composed music for aliens.
And, even with all we know, what still remains unexplained? At a fundamental level, our Universe is made of particles, forces, interactions, and the fabric of space and time. Spacetime […]
The probe, no larger than a car, will be the closest a man-made object has ever gotten to the sun. We will be able to study and see it like we’ve never seen it before.
Black holes in these environments could combine repeatedly to form objects bigger than anything a single star could produce.
We’ve come so far since 2015; what do we know about dark matter now that we didn’t know then? Back in 2015, the dark matter situation was pretty straightforward: the large-scale […]
Don’t believe in dark matter or dark energy? Your view of the Universe just got a lot more difficult. If you ask an astrophysicist what’s the greatest puzzle in the […]
After a 16 year wait, the star SO-2 will speed past our galaxy’s supermassive black hole at 2.5% the speed of light. It will be the first-of-its-kind test of Einstein’s […]
In a sense, a proton acts very much like a star.
Out of five vital questions, which one should we most desire the answer to? Despite all we’ve learned about physics, science, and the Universe before us, there are still some incredibly […]
Hubble holds the record, finding a galaxy when the Universe was just 3% it’s age. In just a few years, James Webb will shatter it. One of the great scientific lessons […]
Before Hawking, black holes were just static points in the background of space. His greatest scientific legacy taught us just how dynamic they are. In 1915, Albert Einstein published his General […]
Plant cognitive ecologist Monica Gagliano talks about the challenges facing serious scientific research into plant intelligence.
It’s so much more than mass-energy equivalence; it’s the key to unlocking the quantum Universe. For hundreds of years, there was an immutable law of physics that was never challenged: […]
Do we need quantum gravity? We sure do… and here’s how we’re trying to get there! Our current best theories describing the Universe, general relativity for gravity, quantum field theory for […]
If the gravity isn’t where the matter is, things get into trouble very, very quickly. The above image, a composite of optical data, X-ray data, and a reconstructed mass map, is […]
Instead of eternal expansion, could we just be part of a universal cosmic cycle? There are few questions that can keep us up at night the way pondering the eventual fate […]
The answer has nothing at all to do with the Higgs boson. In this Universe, there are very few fundamental properties that cannot be derived from something simpler. The rules governing […]
White dwarfs, neutron stars, and brown dwarfs aren’t actually stars at all. Here’s why. When it comes to stars, there’s a huge variety of different types out there. Our Sun is […]
For more than 10 billion years, the star-formation rate across the Universe has been plummeting. Here’s the story. Take a look at a wide variety of galaxies in the Universe, and […]
For 100 million years, there was only creation in the Universe. Meet our first moments of destruction. The cosmic story that gave rise to us is a story rife with […]