Cosmology

Cosmology

An image of a red light shining on a dark background.
Millennia ago, philosophers like Anaximander grasped that nature is the ultimate recycler.
A digitally generated image of a glowing, elongated object framed by a translucent rectangle against a dark background with cosmic web-like structures.
On the largest cosmic scales, galaxies line up along filaments, with great clusters forming at their intersection. Here's how it took shape.
A giant, colorful ring of glowing lines suspended in space
Astronomers claim to have found structures so large, they shouldn't exist. With such biased, incomplete observations, perhaps they don't.
An image of a spiral galaxy with stars in the background, showcasing the mesmerizing beauty of cosmic formations.
The pattern 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc., is the Fibonacci sequence. It shows up all over nature. But what's the full explanation behind it?
primordial black holes
Today, supermassive black holes and their host galaxies tell a specific story in terms of mass. But JWST reveals a different story early on.
An image of a purple galaxy in space.
Observations of an enormous cosmic structure, dubbed the "Big Ring," seem to violate the Copernican principle.
An image of a sphere with stars in it.
For every proton, there were over a billion others that annihilated away with an antimatter counterpart. So where did all that energy go?
supernova remnant star formation spitzer
One newly discovered, ancient star has a composition unlike any other. Explaining its existence is already blowing astronomers' minds.
An image of a star nebula in space.
A new measurement offers insights on the density of the mysterious force driving the Universe's expansion.
Sunlit pebbles on a black background.
The cosmic scales governing the Universe are almost unbelievably large. What if we shrunk the Sun down to be just a grain of sand?
An image of an e - ring in space.
Here's why the answer may forever elude scientists.
A vibrant, high-resolution image of a spiral galaxy with rich clusters of stars and interstellar dust, where most stars formed.
Today, the star-formation rate across the Universe is a mere trickle: just 3% of what it was at its peak. Here's what it was like back then.
An artist's illustration of a supermassive black hole with an accretion disk and relativistic jets.
As early as we've been able to identify them, the youngest galaxies seem to have large supermassive black holes. Here's how they were made.
A stylized illustration of the timeline of the universe, depicting major events from the big bang through the cosmic dark ages to the modern era.
For 550 million years, neutral atoms blocked the light made in stars from traveling freely through the Universe. Here's how it then changed.
A digitally rendered image of a black hole with surrounding accretion disk and stars, depicting the era of the first galaxies.
Even after the first stars form, those overdense regions gravitationally attract matter and also merge. Here's how they grow into galaxies.
Four different images of supernova remnants from NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory
The first stars took tens or even hundreds of millions of years to form, and then died in the cosmic blink of an eye. Here's how.
An artist's impression of a cluster of stars.
The Big Bang's hot glow faded away after only a few million years, leaving the Universe dark until the first stars formed. Oh, the changes!
The ring nebula in space.
The Universe is an amazing place. Under the incredible, infrared gaze of JWST, it's coming into focus better than ever before.
An image of a spiral galaxy in the night sky.
Physicists have yet to pinpoint the hypothetical matter that keeps galaxies from flying apart. Now they have a new focus.
This description features an image of a black hole and an image of a spiral galaxy, breaking the barriers of 10 biggest physics astronomy lies.
Misinformation was extremely popular in 2023, as bad science often made global headlines. Learn the truth behind these 10 dubious stories.
fusion power
In our Universe, matter is made of particles, while antimatter is made of antiparticles. But sometimes, the physical lines get real blurry.
Digital artwork of celestial nebula texture applied to a tessellated shape on a purple grid background, where no stars existed.
Atomic nuclei form in minutes. Atoms form in hundreds of thousands of years. But the "dark ages" rule thereafter, until stars finally form.
An aerial view of a river.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, matter can escape the center of the Earth.
Illustration of a spacecraft, an astronaut, and a planet against a dark purple background.
35mins
Kmele talked with a planetary scientist, a physicist, and a futurist, to understand how visionaries across disciplines are thinking about the future of our planet and humankind.
Image of a JWST deep field, showing a lensed cluster of galaxies containing the early black hole CEERS 1019
Since JWST first glimpsed the Universe, we've entered a new era in understanding the earliest objects in the Universe. What have we learned?
A diagram of a galaxy with a blue circle representing the first atoms in the middle.
The first elements in the Universe formed just minutes after the Big Bang, but it took hundreds of thousands of years before atoms formed.
A mesmerizing starry sky with shooting stars and a majestic tree.
Each December, the Geminid meteor shower puts on a show for skywatchers across Earth. With a new Moon at 2023's peak, it'll be outstanding!
a visualization showing the view from inside the inner event horizon of a Kerr black hole
The brilliant mind who discovered the spacetime solution for rotating black holes claims singularities don't physically exist. Is he right?
An image of an ancient black hole
The Big Bang theory is not threatened, but astrophysicists have some explaining to do.
An visualization of dark matter across the universe
The paper does not prove the existence of dark matter, but it mostly eliminates a rival theory called Modified Newtonian Dynamics.