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Dark Energy
When you mix science with speculation, you get speculation. But the underlying science is still real. Whenever you hear the phrase, “it’s just a theory,” it should trigger alarm bells in […]
It could evolve, strengthen, decay, or not be alone. Our known Universe contains matter, radiation, and dark energy. While matter (both normal and dark) and radiation become less dense as […]
The raw ingredients just weren’t there. Thankfully, their predecessors were. Here on Earth, our planet practically overflows with life. After more than 4 billion years, life has spread to practically […]
How slight differences could have forever changed our cosmic history. 13.8 billion years ago, what we know today as our Universe began with the hot Big Bang. Filled with matter, antimatter […]
Is the Universe the same everywhere? Or are there truly ‘special places’ around? For practically all of human history, one assumption about our place in the Universe had long gone unchallenged: […]
With 5,000 square degrees of data, the Dark Energy Survey has something important to say. For as long as humans have been studying the Universe, we’ve yearned to know the answers […]
It’s a wild idea, but there’s a way to test it. No matter how far we look out in the Universe, there’s always more “Universe” to see. Even at the extreme […]
Or is ‘new space’ created in between the gaps of the ‘old’ space? It’s been almost 100 years since humanity first reached a revolutionary conclusion about our Universe: space itself doesn’t […]
Has all this happened before, and will all this happen once again? There are only a few questions, when we ask them, that force us to reckon with the fundamental nature […]
Is it groupthink? Or is there a deeper reason? In the early half of the 20th century, even after the discovery of the expanding Universe, physicists considered a wide variety of […]
We can describe what we see happening, but we don’t understand why. Despite our vast cosmic knowledge, enormous unknowns remain. The quantum fluctuations inherent to space, stretched across the Universe […]
We need more and better data to know, but that’s exactly what’s coming. Over the past few decades, a number of important advances have helped revolutionize our picture of the Universe. […]
Something isn’t adding up, but it isn’t a calibration error. It’s been nearly 100 years since we discovered that the Universe was expanding. Ever since, the scientists who study the […]
One image can give over 100 times the data we now get from Hubble. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, revealed the previously unseen Universe. The most distant galaxy ever […]
Even before the Big Bang, energetic radiation was always present. When it comes to the physical Universe, the notion of “nothing” may truly be possible only in theory, not in […]
And what might we learn as we collect new, never-before-seen data? If you took one of history’s top scientists from 100 years ago and dropped them into today’s world, what […]
If you want to get the Universe we see, a multiverse comes along for the ride. When we look out at the Universe today, it simultaneously tells us two stories about […]
If everything eventually dies and decays, is there a way to prolong the inevitable? Our Universe, as it exists today, puts us in an incredibly privileged position. Had we come […]
The inevitable long, slow decline is accelerating, and there’s nothing we can do. The Universe, as it is today, is less active, is forming fewer stars, and is creating fewer chances […]
Time always moves in the same direction, but what if the Universe were contracting? As we step forward in time, a number of things always seem to happen together. Objects […]
We have two ways of measuring the expansion rate. Here’s the harder one. If you want to understand where our Universe came from and where it’s going, you need to measure […]
There are many things on large scales that also appear on small scales. But is the Universe truly a fractal? If you take a look at the structures that form in […]
The expansion rate is dropping, but distant galaxies are accelerating. Here’s how. If you take a look at any galaxy in the Universe that isn’t gravitationally bound to our own, we’ve […]
A single lifetime is more than enough to take you to the limits of the Universe. Right now, there are only three things limiting how far our spacecrafts can take […]
It might have been Einstein’s greatest blunder, but it’s our leading theory today. One of the most mysterious components in the entire Universe is dark energy, which — if we’re being honest with […]
It might not feel that way, but a 95% dark Universe really is the best game in town. No matter how much we might try and hide it, there’s an enormous […]
With just a few more neutron star mergers, we’ll have the best constraints of all-time. How fast is the Universe expanding? Ever since the expanding Universe was first discovered nearly […]
If the multiverse is real, where does all the energy for it come from? One of the biggest scientific puzzles, even given our knowledge of the Big Bang, is to understand […]
Our ultimate fate depends on something we’ve barely begun to measure. One of the biggest mysteries in all of physics is dark energy. According to our best observations, the Universe cannot […]
And can scientists even agree on what ‘nothing’ means? The more curious we get about the great cosmic unknowns, the more unanswered questions our investigations of the Universe will reveal. […]