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Dark Matter
And do our black holes give birth to baby Universes? When it comes to our understanding of the Universe, the 20th century was full of surprises. A little over 100 […]
From galaxies with no dark matter to ones with hundreds of times more dark matter than normal, our Universe needs it more than ever. One of the most mysterious substances in […]
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 […]
Despite the claims of one of Earth’s newest Nobel Laureates, the data doesn’t lie. One of the greatest scientific successes of the past century was the theory of the hot Big […]
Why does dark matter, if it doesn’t dissipate energy, become gravitationally bound at all? One of the most puzzling components of the Universe has to be dark matter. Although we have […]
Could this finally be the clue we’ve hoped for in uncovering the truth about dark matter? In the physical sciences, theory and observation are supposed to work hand-in-hand. Theorists work out […]
It wasn’t the birth of space and time. But it was truly essential to our cosmic story. For more than 50 years, we’ve had definitive scientific evidence that our Universe, as […]
California’s Bobcat Fire has reached Mount Wilson Observatory’s doorstep. 100 years ago, our understanding of the Universe was very different from what it is today. Einstein’s General Relativity, our theory […]
We may be different in many ways, but the cosmic story is the same for each of us. In all the Universe, you won’t find another planet identical to Earth. Planet […]
Black holes are the darkest objects of all. But are they made of dark matter? When it comes to the Universe, few objects are more compelling, fascinating, or extreme than black […]
Just because something’s unlikely doesn’t mean that anything’s wrong. In our quest to understand the Universe, theoretical physics is perhaps the most powerful tool we have as far as making […]
It doesn’t have to be a science-fiction dream. For as long as human beings have been watching the night sky, we’ve dreamed of visiting other worlds and truly seeing what’s […]
The history of the Universe is forever imprinted in our own bodies. We can learn a lot about the history of the Universe just by looking at each of our own […]
There’s a boundary to how far back we can observe everything that exists. Despite everything we’ve learned about our Universe, there are many existential questions that remain unanswered. We don’t know […]
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 […]
You never know what you’re going to find when you look somewhere new for the first time. Approximately 4600 feet (1400 meters) underground, beneath the Italian mountain known as Gran Sasso, […]
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 […]
On the largest scales, dark matter holds the Universe together. But on small ones, it helps reveal exactly what it is… and isn’t! Dark matter is often thought of as the […]
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 […]
You’d have to throw out a lot of known physics for this to even be a possibility. Here’s why. It’s an undeniable scientific fact that dark matter must exist in order […]
Dark matter is perhaps the most mysterious substance in the Universe. What exactly it is, however, still eludes us. Dark matter is one of the most mysterious and yet most ubiquitous […]
Ever wonder, exactly, how stars form from molecular gas and dust? So do scientists. One of the great challenges for astronomy is to determine, in gory detail, how stars are […]
Only one dark matter detection experiment ever gave a positive result, in conflict with all the others. This could be why. For multiple generations now, it’s been apparent to astronomers that […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
If dark matter is fundamentally different from the normal matter we know, there should be a way to test it. Here are the results. Dark matter — despite the enormous indirect evidence for […]