Cosmology

Cosmology

A visual simulation of two objects orbiting and merging, distorting a red-orange grid representing spacetime—illustrating gravitational waves once thought to be the worst prediction in science.
The measured value of the cosmological constant is 120 orders of magnitude smaller than what's predicted. How can this paradox be resolved?
A crane lifts a large metal structure onto a white building at a construction site in a mountainous, arid area under clear blue sky.
The relic signal that first proved the Big Bang has been known and analyzed for 60 years. Join us at the frontiers of modern cosmology!
The CMB has long been considered the Big Bang's "smoking gun" evidence. But after what JWST saw, might it come from early galaxies instead?
A dense field of distant galaxies and bright stars against a black background, as captured in a JWST early galaxies deep space telescope image.
Originally, the abundance of bright, early galaxies shocked astronomers. After 3 years of JWST, we now know what's really going on.
An image of a sphere with stars in it.
For over 50 years, it’s been the scientifically accepted theory describing the origin of the Universe. It’s time we all learned its truths.
Infographic illustrating three steps to measure the Hubble Constant, showing Cepheid variable stars, supernovae, and galaxies at increasing distances with redshifted light—highlighting how these methods reveal that the hubble tension is real.
Is the Universe's expansion rate 67 km/s/Mpc, 73 km/s/Mpc, or somewhere in between? The Hubble tension is real and not so easy to resolve.
parallel universe
The ANITA experiment found cosmic rays shooting out of Antarctica. One interpretation claims "parallel Universes," but is that right?
A composite image showing a galaxy with red circles marking stars on the left and multicolored expanding rings with Earth on the right, all set against a grid background, illustrating concepts like Hubble tension studied by Wendy Freedman.
Different methods of measuring the Universe's expansion rate yield high-precision, incompatible answers. But is the problem robustly real?
The tiniest galaxies of all are the most severely dominated by dark matter. Could black holes be the cause of the extra gravity instead?
Timeline of the universe from the Big Bang, as described in cosmology, showing inflation, formation of atoms, stars, galaxies, and expansion to the present day over 13.8 billion years.
If you want to understand the Universe, cosmologically, you just can't do it without the Friedmann equation. With it, the cosmos is yours.
A blue planet with visible rings and several small, bright Uranus moons is set against a darkened black background.
Viewing Uranus's largest moons with Hubble, astronomers hoped to find darkening on the trailing side. They found the exact opposite instead.
Image of two large elliptical galaxies surrounded by several smaller, colorful galaxies and stars against a dark background in space.
The first galaxies were irregular blobs of gas and stars. But modern features, like spiral arms and bars, appeared earlier than expected.
An artist's impression of a cluster of stars.
If the Universe is 13.8 billion years old today, but different ages the farther we look back, what does it mean for a star to be the first?
A split image shows a star field on the left and a COSMOS-Web survey area diagram on the right, with labeled NIRCam and MIRI footprints alongside the moon for scale, highlighting galaxies explored by JWST science.
The COSMOS-Web has just finalized their release of their full field: larger and deeper than any other JWST program. Here's what's inside.
Edwin Hubble and Andromeda galaxy
For decades, astronomers have claimed the Milky Way will merge with Andromeda in ~4 billion years. Here's why, in 2025, that seems unlikely.
A digital 3D visualization shows translucent blue shapes in front of a blue wall and floor, illustrating an abstract concept—perhaps a universe without dark matter.
In our Universe, dark matter outmasses normal matter by a 5-to-1 ratio, shaping the Universe as we know it. What if it simply weren't there?
It rotates on its axis, revolves around the Sun, moves throughout the Milky Way, and gets carried by our galaxy all throughout space.
Close-up of a large, metallic, circular structure with concentric rings and radial lines, illuminated by natural light from one side—evoking experiments that revealed the neutrino mass is smaller than once believed.
The long-elusive neutrino was shown to have a bizarre property no one expected: mass. New, tightest-ever limits have profound implications.
An artist's impression of a cluster of stars.
Many were hoping that JWST would find the first stars of all. Despite many hopeful claims, it hasn't, and probably can't. Here's how we can.
black hole baby universe
Here in our Universe, time passes at a fixed rate for all observers: one second-per-second. Before the Big Bang, things were very different.
A colored pixelated grid with rectangular outlines; a legend in the top right labels blue as F115W, green as F200W, and red as F277W—capturing data from the JWST to record a distant galaxy.
Coming from just 280 million years after the Big Bang, or 98% of cosmic history ago, this new, massive galaxy is a puzzle, but not a mirage.
entanglement across space
If all massive objects emit Hawking radiation, not just black holes alone, then everything is unstable, even the Universe. Can that be true?
Two bright, irregularly shaped nebula clouds with blue, purple, and pink gases dominate the dark space background, where dazzling stars twinkle—reminding us that in space, appearances can deceive.
There's an old saying that "what you see is what you get." When it comes to the Universe, however, there's often more to the full story.
Scatter plot with dark blue data points and black dashed elliptical contours centered on the origin, with axes labeled ξ (') horizontally and vertically—similar to plots used by astronomers in studies of the smallest galaxy ever discovered.
With stars, gas, and dark matter, galaxies come in a great array of sizes. This new one, Ursa Major III/UNIONS 1, is the smallest by far.
Diagram of the solar system with gravitational waves emanating from a distant bright source, and a triangular spacecraft array detecting the waves in space.
Just 10 years ago, humanity had never directly detected a single gravitational wave. We're closing in on 300 now, with so much more to come!
dark energy accelerated expansion
The fact that our Universe's expansion is accelerating implies that dark energy exists. But could it be even weirder than we've imagined?
symmetry
The laws of physics obey certain symmetries and defy others. It's theoretically tempting to add new ones, but reality doesn't agree.
baryon acoustic oscillations
It took nearly 400,000 years, after the Big Bang, to first form neutral atoms. The imprints from that early time can now be seen everywhere.
A dense field of stars and galaxies is visible against a black background, with some bright stars showing lens flares.
The COSMOS-Web survey is now complete, combining JWST and Hubble infrared data. Its spectacular views show us the Universe as never before.