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Cosmology
Even with the quantum rules governing the Universe, there are limits to what matter can withstand. Beyond that, black holes are unavoidable.
Back in the 1930s, Fritz Zwicky postulated the existence of dark matter. No one took it seriously until Vera Rubin's work: 40 years later.
All stars, eventually, run out of fuel and die. Given all the stars we can see and the vast distance to them, are any of them already dead?
The hunt for the elusive particles continues.
We may be the last generation born not knowing if we are alone in the Universe.
Science fiction met nuclear fission when Hungarian physicist Leó Szilárd pondered the explosive potential of nuclear energy.
For many years, cosmologists have claimed the Universe is 13.8 billion years old. A new paper says no, it's 26.7 billion. How do we decide?
If you've found yourself befuddled by extraordinary scientific-sounding claims, you're not alone. But this centuries-old lesson can help.
From the present day all the way to less than 400 million years after the Big Bang, we're seeing how the Universe grew up like never before.
Headlines have blared that quasar ticking confirms that time passed more slowly in the early Universe. That's not how any of this works.
There's an entire Universe out there. So, with all that space, all those planets, and all those chances at life, why do we all live here?
A cute mathematical trick can "rescale" the Universe so that it isn't actually expanding. But can that "trick" survive all our cosmic tests?
As the Earth spins and wobbles on its axis and revolves elliptically around the Sun, each day changes from the last. "24 hours" isn't right.
The multiverse pushes beyond the limits of the scientific method. From our vantage point in the Universe, we cannot know if it's real.
In many ways, we are still novices playing with toy models seeking to understand the stars.
In a far-reaching discovery with astrophysicist Karolina Garcia, we discuss what's in the Universe and how it grew up.
If we waited long enough, would even protons themselves decay? The far future stability of the Universe depends on it.
What do the dark recesses of the early Universe and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have in common? More than you could have ever hoped for.
How are we to deal with the quantization of spacetime and gravity?
Up until 2002, we thought that the heaviest stable element was bismuth: #83 on the periodic table. That's absolutely no longer the case.
Sun-like stars live for around 10 billion years, but our Universe is only 13.8 billion years old. So what's the maximum lifetime for a star?
Neuroscientist and author Bobby Azarian explores the idea that the Universe is a self-organizing system that evolves and learns.
With hundreds of billions of stars burning bright, some galaxies are already dead. Their inhabitants might not know it, but we're certain.
Just by observing the tiny amount of deuterium left over from the Big Bang, we can determine that dark matter and dark energy must exist.
There is no such thing as a void in the Universe.
When Einstein gave General Relativity to the world, he included an extraneous cosmological constant. How did his 'biggest blunder' occur?
With no other galaxies in its vicinity for ~100 million light-years in all directions, it's as isolated and lonely as a galaxy can be.
Spiritual experiences can be explained in terms of a highly evolved brain. But they also can be extremely meaningful.
John Templeton Foundation
There are two methods to measure the expansion rate of the Universe. The results do not agree with each other, and this is a big problem.
In 1974, Hawking showed that black holes aren't stable, but emit radiation and decay. Nearly 50 years later, it isn't just for black holes.