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Dark Energy
If we want our conclusions to be meaningful, our data had better be robust. When it comes to the Universe, there’s a whole lot that doesn’t add up. All the matter […]
Have we always had quantum fields in the Universe? Or did they emerge at some finite time? No matter how we look at the Universe — at low temperatures or ultra-high energies, from […]
The anthropic principle has some fascinating scientific uses. And abuses, too. For thousands of years, humans have pondered the meaning of our existence. From philosophers who debated whether their minds could […]
Is the “big freeze” our inevitable fate, or can dark energy save us? When we look out at the Universe today, we see sources of light practically everywhere we look. In […]
Forgetting them, at any step, can lead to unscientific conclusions. No one, not even the smartest among us, were competent scientists from the outset. The concept of science is simple […]
As the Universe ages, will it eventually fade away entirely? The earliest signal we’ve ever directly detected from the Universe comes to us from shortly after the Big Bang: when […]
Everything is being driven apart. But there’s hope of reaching what’s currently so far away. For the first 7.8 billion years, the Universe unfolded exactly as scientists would have expected in […]
How quickly is it expanding today, and how does that expansion rate change over time? What is the Universe made of? How quickly is it expanding today, and how does that […]
The Standard Model and General Relativity can’t be all there is. But how will we discover what lies beyond them? One of the biggest problems with physics is that, apart from […]
There’s a lot left to understand, ponder, and investigate. And there always will be. For hundreds of thousands of years — nearly all of human history — we had no definitive answers to some of […]
Nothing in the Universe can travel faster than the speed of light. So how does space itself do it? One of the fundamental rules we all learn in physics — set forth by […]
They said the “missing half” of the Universe’s matter was just found. But what they found barely makes a dent to the big picture. When we look up into the great […]
There are three things your new theory must do in order to be taken seriously as science. This one’s 0-for-3. Every once in a while, a revolutionary idea comes along that […]
There’s a million things we haven’t done. But just you wait. The Universe as we know it began some 13.8 billion years ago with the onset of the hot Big Bang. […]
All the things that surround us and make us up weren’t always here. But where did it all come from? The Universe, as we see it today, sure is full of […]
A generation ago, NASA launched their great observatories to explore the Universe. It’s time for round 2. Throughout the history of astronomy, every advance we’ve ever made has come about because […]
Over the past 30 years, we’ve revolutionized what we know about the Universe. But we couldn’t have done it without these lessons. On April 24, 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope rocketed […]
The original Hubble Deep Field truly showed us what the Universe looks like. Later this month, the Hubble Space Telescope will celebrate its 30th anniversary. This photo of the Hubble Space […]
Today, our observable Universe extends for 46 billion light-years in all directions. But early on, things were much smaller. There are few things we can conceive of that are as mind-bogglingly […]
Scientific surprises are often how science advances. But more often than not, they’re just bad science. When you’re a scientist, getting an unexpected result can be a double-edged sword. The best […]
And how cutting just $1 billion per year in funding from NASA’s budget would be a catastrophe for science. When you think of the great cosmic beyond and what we know […]
It’s been called the biggest conundrum in all of cosmology, and recent measurements just add to the confusion. One of the most puzzling facts about the Universe is that different […]
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. The Universe we know today, filled with stars […]
If galaxies are cities in the Universe, how unfortunate that our ‘cosmic country’ is dissolving. On the largest cosmic scales of all, planet Earth appears to be anything but special. […]
Just because an idea is fashionable doesn’t mean it’s relevant for our Universe. One of the greatest unsolved puzzles in all of science is dark energy. The Universe isn’t just […]
In General Relativity, the fabric of space doesn’t remain static over time. Everything else depends on the details we measure. If there’s one thing we’ve experimentally determined to be a constant […]
After 13.8 billion years, there’s still a whole lot that’s changing as time goes on. With each new year that comes upon us, there are a slew of new events awaiting […]
Astronomy’s enduring quest is to go farther, fainter, and more detailed than ever before. Here’s the edge of the cosmic frontier. Astronomers have always sought to push back the viewable […]
In the middle of a great cosmic void, a single, isolated galaxy persists amidst the darkness. It’s about to get a lot lonelier. Here in our own cosmic backyard, the […]
The hot Big Bang occurred 13.8 billion years ago, and there’s no other possible answer consistent with what we know today. Conceptually, it might seem like the simplest idea in existence […]