Now that we’ve seen our first one, we want more, and we want them better. Here’s how to get there. To resolve any astronomical object, you must achieve resolutions superior to […]

It’s the technique, from the Event Horizon Telescope, that brought us a black hole’s image. Here’s how it works. The Event Horizon Telescope has accomplished what no other telescope or telescope […]

And what do we still have left to learn? The original idea of a black hole goes all the way back to 1783, when Cambridge scientist John Michell recognized that a […]

The first image of an Event Horizon is here. Here’s what it means. Variety isn’t just the spice of life, but a natural consequence of living in our Universe. Gravitation, obeying […]

We’ve never seen an image of a black hole’s event horizon before. Here’s what we’re expecting, based on what we already know. For hundreds of years, physicists have hypothesized that the […]

What should a black hole look like? Our theoretical predictions are about to meet our first observations. In science, there’s no moment more exciting than when you get to confront […]

The visible light portion of the spectrum is tiny compared to the whole thing. Here’s what we’re missing. When you look at the Milky Way in visible light, you might see […]

LIGO and Virgo have now detected a total of 11 binary merger events. But exactly 0 were in the Milky Way. Here’s why. One of the most spectacular recent advances in […]

In order to reap the greatest rewards, we have to think big and invest big. One of these four missions will deliver like never before. When it comes to exploring the […]

Even if we don’t destroy ourselves, we always have the Universe to contend with. Wiping out all life on Earth is hard, but causing mass extinctions is easy. The 1991 eruption […]

Gravity gets weaker as the distance squared. But gravitational waves only get weaker as the distance. Why? One of the things we often just accept about the world is that […]

In 2017, we saw gravitational waves a neutron star merger for the first and only time. And it keeps getting more interesting. On August 17, 2017, a cosmic signal arrived […]

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 […]

Our Universe is full of surprises. This latest one, AT2018cow, has ignited a controversy between astronomers. The Universe is an ever-changing place, particularly if you look at it on long-enough […]

With a new data run coming in 2019 at unprecedented sensitivity, we might finally get our answers. Over the past three years, LIGO discovered ten independent instances of merging black holes […]

With an assist from Einstein’s gravity and the power of the Hubble Space Telescope, it’s the brightest quasar we’ve ever discovered. In astronomy, there are two types of questions to […]

While nothing is ever certain about the future, here are 10 great achievements you can bet on. Every year, unexpected scientific discoveries challenge what we know. Observations using the Atacama Large […]

When two black holes merge together, about 5% of their mass gets lost. Where does that information go? Do merging black holes lose information? They absolutely must, according to General […]

Despite being 28 years old and having a gyroscope failure, Hubble still delivered these 10 amazing snapshots in 2018. Year after year since its 1990 launch, Hubble keeps revolutionizing our view […]

Despite what you may have heard, they don’t suck anything in at all. Black holes are some of the strangest, most wondrous objects in all the Universe. With huge amounts of […]

Have you ever wanted to: see the southern skies? visit the best resort on the South American continent? explore the Atacama desert? see the world’s most powerful radio telescope array? […]

It will be the most extreme test of Einstein’s General Relativity ever. And we already have the data. With every year that goes by, the total amount of knowledge that humanity […]

With a total of 10 black holes detected, what we’ve learned about the Universe is truly amazing. On September 14th, 2015, just days after LIGO first turned on at its new-and-improved […]

Despite what Hawking told you, it really isn’t about particle-antiparticle pairs at all. Nothing in the Universe lives forever. All the stars that will ever form will someday burn out; distant […]

Your fate is only rarely determined at birth. Ultimately, every star has a chance to get there. Three times in the past 1,000 years, a portion of humanity has looked up […]

These ten ghostly astronomical sights house some deep-and-frightening scientific truths within them. With a huge suite of different observatories for viewing the Universe, innumerable details can be revealed. This ‘Godzilla’ asterism […]

No matter what Martin Rees or anyone else says, physics dictates that the world is safe. The Large Hadron Collider is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. An aerial view of […]

It was Stephen Hawking’s obsession for the last 30 years of his life. Here’s why it matters. When it comes to the sciences, sometimes making two observations or measurements that appear […]

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 […]

The Big Bang happened everywhere at once, but stars are a different story. The Universe, back at its inception, was almost perfectly identical everywhere. It was the same high temperature […]