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 […]

How can physics on the smallest scales affect what the Universe does on its largest ones? Cosmic inflation holds the answer. On a macroscopic level, the Universe appears to be entirely […]

The shape of our Universe has long been recognized to be flat. But that isn’t the only possibility. The Universe is expanding, and goes on for farther than even our […]

And if the data is good enough, we can determine that it’s accelerating directly, too, silencing the last remaining doubters. If you want to understand what the Universe is made […]

Scientists actively researching this have known the answer for quite some time. It’s time for everyone to catch up. The Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago, and is generally regarded […]

There are a lot of unsolved mysteries in the Universe, but dark energy is the most confusing. Here’s why. The majority of the energy in our Universe went completely undiscovered until […]

100+ years ago, General Relativity came along, and Einstein gave the Universe a cosmological constant. Here’s why that was a mistake. Back in the 17th century, Isaac Newton put forth the […]

In the mid-20th century, ‘physical cosmology’ was considered an oxymoronic joke. Today, it’s Nobel-winning science. Imagine you wanted to know everything you could about the Universe. You’d want to find […]

Or, quite possibly, is it more complex than either one of those scenarios? If there’s one lesson that humanity should have learned from the 20th century, it’s this: the Universe […]

Jim Peebles, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz just won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics. It couldn’t be more well-deserved. Every year, the Nobel Prize reminds all of humanity to […]

With the discovery of the Higgs boson, the Standard Model is now complete. Can we be sure there isn’t another generation of particles out there? The Universe, at a fundamental level, […]

As more data comes in, the puzzle gets deeper and deeper. Whenever you set out to solve a problem, there are a series of steps you have to take in order […]

When the Universe expands, photons redshift to longer wavelengths and lower energies. So where does that energy go? Imagine the ultimate version of a toy Universe: it’s expanding, it’s full of […]

And does it require the idea of ‘negative gravity’ in order to work? The biggest question that we’re even capable of asking, with our present knowledge and understanding of the Universe, […]

Two independent techniques give precise but incompatible answers. Here’s how to resolve it. If you didn’t know anything about the Universe beyond our own galaxy, there are two different pathways you […]

When we think about the birth of the Universe, was time already in place? When we look at the Universe today, we know with an extraordinary amount of scientific certainty that […]

13.8 billion years isn’t close to enough time, but if we wait long enough, even our Sun will become one. The Big Bang happened approximately 13.8 billion years ago, and it […]

Even the best science imaginable has its limits. In terms of ambition, it’s hard to ask for more than to know absolutely everything there is to know about the Universe. That’s […]

Some claim that inflation isn’t science, but it sure has made some incredibly successful scientific predictions. So, you want to know how the Universe began? You’re not alone. Every other […]

The world’s greatest observatory can go no further with its current instrument set. The Hubble Space Telescope has provided humanity with our deepest views of the Universe ever. It has […]

Dark matter, dark energy, inflation and the Big Bang are real, and the alternatives all fail spectacularly. If you keep up with the latest science news, you’re probably familiar with […]

How fast is the Universe expanding? The results might be pointing to something incredible. If you want to know how something in the Universe works, all you need to do […]

It might be the biggest conundrum facing cosmology today. But perhaps it’s not a controversy; it might be a clue. https://soundcloud.com/ethan-siegel-172073460/starts-with-a-bang-44-the-expanding-universe/ One of the biggest conundrums in the Universe surrounds the […]

When the Universe gives us clues, we ignore them at our own peril. When you approach the world scientifically, you seek to gain knowledge about how it works by asking it […]

If dark energy is causing the Universe to disappear, how can we still find and see ultra-distant stars and galaxies? In the 1920s, scientists discovered that the Universe was expandingbased […]

As more time passes since the Big Bang, more of the Universe comes into view. But how much? Even though it’s been billions of years since the Big Bang, there’s a […]

Before we formed stars, atoms, elements, or even got rid of our antimatter, the Big Bang made neutrinos. And we found them. The idea of the Big Bang has captivated the […]

For billions of years, dark energy couldn’t have been detected. Now, it’s everywhere we look. When we look out at the ultra-distant Universe, billion of light-years away, we’re seeing it as […]