Just one equation relates the expansion of space to all the matter and energy we have. If you know this, you can know the fate of the Universe. Last week, […]

The picture itself is breathtaking. But what we learn is truly eye-opening. Galaxy clusters, like the massive one captured here by Hubble, PLCK G004.5–19.5, impress not just for their looks, […]

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 […]

It took the Universe 9.2 billion years to create the Earth, and another 4 billion for complex life. Could we have gotten there faster? The story of how the Universe came […]

In the aftermath of everything we’ve learned about what’s in the Universe, we can make much better estimates of how many alien civilizations are out there. In 1961, scientist Frank Drake […]

Even with nothing new falling into it, our radius is increasing with every second that goes by. It’s no big secret that galaxies grow over time. The force of gravity is […]

The paradox is one that Hawking himself claimed to have a solution to many times, but none of the proposals have held up to scrutiny. The paradox is still unresolved. […]

It’s the first, most naive question you might think to ask. The solution is a lot more complicated than you imagine. According to a large amount of evidence, the overwhelming majority […]

If everything was hot, dense, and super close-together at the Big Bang, what kept us from collapsing into a singularity? The Big Bang is one of the most counterintuitive ideas […]

Ever hear of Hawking radiation? Or the black hole information paradox? Time to get your fix! In memory of Stephen Hawking’s life, I’ve decided to share the physics behind his greatest […]

With hundreds of billions of stars burning bright, ‘dead’ seems like a bit of an exaggeration. But every galaxy is headed for this fate, including ours. As long as a […]

Even our scientific heroes can’t be right about everything. Let’s learn the lessons that they never did. In the 1960s, a young theoretical physicist named Stephen Hawking rose to prominence as […]

For every planet that orbits a star like our own, there are likely thousands of ‘orphan planets’ wandering the galaxy alone. Here in the Solar System, we can watch our star’s […]

There have been a lot of public advocates from the “no dark matter” camp, getting lots of popular attention. But the Universe still needs dark matter. Here’s why. If you took […]

The possibilities were almost limitless, so why does everything line up? Our Solar System is an orderly place, with the four inner planets, the asteroid belt, and the gas giant worlds […]

If the multiverse is real, why hasn’t our Universe, in a sea of infinite possibilities, run into another one at least once? The Universe we inhabit is vast, full of matter […]

Distances in the expanding Universe don’t work like you’d expect. Unless, that is, you learn to think like a cosmologist. There are a few fundamental facts about the Universe — its origin, […]

A single, complete view of half the world was enough to teach us how these distant, frozen bodies work. On July 14, 2015, NASA’s New Horizons flew by Pluto. Pluto’s atmosphere, […]

The Universe may defy our intuition, but that’s what science is for! If you take a look out at the Universe, and in every direction you look, you see objects rushing […]

It isn’t just for merging neutron stars, anymore. Over the past three years, there’s arguably been no greater scientific discovery than the direct detection of gravitational waves. The two LIGO […]

If you want to know how we get something from nothing, you’d better understand what we mean! When we look around at our world and Universe today, we talk and think […]

Plus, how the mycelium network’s destruction could, physically, actually end life in the Universe. Imagine taking a seemingly impossible journey: traveling to another Universe on a network of biological spores […]

If nothing can escape from beneath the event horizon, where do these phenomena come from? The most important feature of a black hole is that it has an event horizon: a […]

Would there be only blackness past the event horizon? Or something more? Black holes are some of the most perplexing objects in the entire Universe. Objects so dense, where gravitation […]

There’s nothing new, recent, or remarkable about it. It’s just a typical cosmic pebble in the galactic ocean. Last year, the interstellar interloper ʻOumuamua passed through the inner Solar System. Originally […]

Are we looking for life in all the wrong ways, like SETI with smoke signals? A little over 80 years ago, humanity first began broadcasting radio and television signals with enough […]

They’re less than a billion years old. And, thanks to ALMA, they might finally pave the way to understanding how galaxies form. How do galaxies like our Milky Way come to […]

A cosmic controversy is back, and at least one camp — perhaps both — is making an unidentified error. Ever since Hubble first discovered the relationship between a galaxy’s distance and its motion away […]

What if alien life — or even intelligence — don’t look like what we’re searching for? When the original Star Trek premiered, it was revolutionary for depicting sentient, intelligent species other than humans, living […]

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 […]