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Big Bang Theory
Is the Universe finite or infinite? Does it go on forever or loop back on itself? Here's what would happen if you traveled forever.
It is time to give the Russian cosmologist the credit he deserves.
We frequently say it's 2.725 K: from the light left over all the way from the Big Bang. But that's not all that's in the Universe.
The James Webb Space Telescope finally could answer the age-old question of whether we are alone in the universe.
There are two fundamentally different ways of measuring the Universe's expansion. They disagree. "Early dark energy" might save us.
From before the Big Bang to the present day, the Universe goes through many eras. Dark energy heralds the final one.
Known as primordial black holes, they could thoroughly change our Universe's history. But the evidence is strongly against them.
We know it couldn't have began from a singularity. So how small could it have been at the absolute minimum?
Astrophysicists once believed in a static Universe, containing only the Milky Way galaxy. Science definitively proved otherwise.
After more than two decades of precision measurements, we've now reached the "gold standard" for how the pieces don't fit.
Previously, only the brightest and most active galaxies could pierce the obscuring wall of cosmic dust. At last, normal galaxies break through.
There are over 100 known elements in the periodic table. These 8 ways of making them account for every one.
But the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope compels us to add, “so far.” Beginning with its 1990 launch, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope revolutionized our conception of the Universe. This photo of […]
Once merely a theoretical curiosity, they might be the key to understanding so much more. Out of all of the known particles — both fundamental and composite — there are a whole slew of properties […]
Whatever’s lurking out there, it isn’t all, or even mostly, normal matter. When it comes to the Universe, it’s only natural to wonder what, exactly, it is that makes everything up. […]
“Hubble’s Law” is only an approximation, and breaks down when we need it most. From anywhere in the Universe, you can choose to look out at any other galaxy that’s present. […]
It happened more than once, and needed to. Here’s why. If there’s one thing you can be certain about when it comes to outer space, it’s that it’s transparent, not opaque, […]
If it wasn’t a singularity, how small could it have been? Today, when you look out in any direction as far as the laws of physics allow us to see, the […]
Galaxies can have regions both hotter and colder than the background radiation of the Universe. When we talk about the depths of space, we get this picture in our heads […]
It could evolve, strengthen, decay, or not be alone. Our known Universe contains matter, radiation, and dark energy. While matter (both normal and dark) and radiation become less dense as […]
The raw ingredients just weren’t there. Thankfully, their predecessors were. Here on Earth, our planet practically overflows with life. After more than 4 billion years, life has spread to practically […]
And, if we have one, how close are we to it? No matter which direction we look in, or how far away our telescopes and instruments are capable of seeing, the […]
Despite the recent headlines, it’s an extraordinarily unlikely proposition. Have you ever wondered, if it were possible to travel through space straight ahead as quickly as you could imagine, if […]
Yes, the Big Bang is real, but what about what came before? If you ask anyone about the origin of some phenomenon that we’ve observed, they’ll usually default to the same […]
The rarest stars in the Universe are the ones we need the most to make humanity possible. Like everything in the Universe, stars are born, they live a little while, […]
How slight differences could have forever changed our cosmic history. 13.8 billion years ago, what we know today as our Universe began with the hot Big Bang. Filled with matter, antimatter […]
Is the Universe the same everywhere? Or are there truly ‘special places’ around? For practically all of human history, one assumption about our place in the Universe had long gone unchallenged: […]
Filaments, hundreds of millions of light-years long, were just caught spinning. In our own cosmic backyard, everything we see spins, rotates, and revolves in some fashion or other. Our planet […]
An artist’s impression of what the fully-deployed James Webb Space telescope will look like from the perspective of an observer on the ‘dark’ (non-Sun-facing) side of the observatory. (NORTHRUP GRUMMAN) […]
It’s a wild idea, but there’s a way to test it. No matter how far we look out in the Universe, there’s always more “Universe” to see. Even at the extreme […]