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Cosmology
Though he renounced philosophy, Stephen Hawking's final theory of the universe redraws the basic foundations of cosmology.
The Universe is grand, awe-inspiring, and greater than we likely imagine. Even astrophysicists get anxious thinking about it, but we cope.
It may be time for a cosmological paradigm shift.
For many years, some cosmologists embraced the idea of an eternal, steady state universe. But science triumphed over philosophical prejudice.
With a massive, charged nucleus orbited by tiny electrons, atoms are such simple objects. Miraculously, they make up everything we know.
Stars orbiting black holes were observed to move significantly slower than expected. One explanation centers on dark matter.
When white dwarfs explode, they create a type Ia supernovae. After decades of following the leading theory, here's the complete overhaul!
Einstein called his idea "abominable," but the world of physics came around to embracing the views of Georges Lemaître.
Finding this missing piece of water’s path through the universe offers clues to how it came to be on Earth.
Our huge, expanding Universe may truly be infinite. But if the set of possible quantum outcomes is also infinite, which "infinity" wins?
The multiverse is an idea that has gained a lot of traction in popular culture. But what does science have to say about it?
With a finite 13.8 billion years having passed since the Big Bang, there's an edge to what we can see: the cosmic horizon. What's it like?
If the evolution of the Universe is a movie, what happens when we rewind it all the way backward?
Time gets a little strange as you approach the speed of light.
That scary swirling void from which nothing can escape is our perfect universal translation tool.
Many galaxies really are ultra-distant, but some are just intrinsically red or dusty. Only with spectroscopy can JWST tell which is which.
2023 is an exciting time for the study of quark-gluon plasmas.
If there are three neutrino species, all with different masses, then how is energy conserved when they oscillate from one flavor to another?
How scientists found out that we live in a cosmic aquarium.
When supermassive black holes merge, they emit more energy than anything else to occur in our Universe except the Big Bang.
It's the best-known transcendental number of all-time, and March 14 (3/14 in many countries) is the perfect time to celebrate Pi (π) Day!
We can't go back to the Big Bang, nor ahead to the heat death of the Universe. Nevertheless, here are today's natural temperature extremes.
Two very different ideas, wormholes and quantum entanglement, might be fundamentally related. What would "ER = EPR" mean for our Universe?
Not even Einstein immediately knew the power of the equations he gave us.
The zero-point energy of empty space is not zero. Even with all the physics we know, we have no idea how to calculate what it ought to be.
What kind of object will you form? What will its fate be? How long will a star live? Almost everything is determined by mass alone.
A non-invasive method for looking inside structures is solving mysteries about the ancient pyramid.
If you're a massless particle, you must always move at light speed. If you have mass, you must go slower. So why aren't any neutrinos slow?
Unless you confront your theory with what's actually out there in the Universe, you're playing in the sandbox, not engaging in science.