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Gravitational Lensing
Known as orphaned planets, rogue planets, or planets without parent stars, these "outliers" might be the most common type of planet overall.
There was a lot of hype and a lot of nonsense, but also some profoundly major advances. Here are the biggest ones you may have missed.
The Firefly Sparkle galaxy was only spotted because of gravitational lensing's effects. Yet galaxies like these brought us a visible cosmos.
It was barely a century ago that we thought the Milky Way encompassed the entirety of the Universe. Now? We're not even a special galaxy.
DESI has allowed astronomers to create an unprecedented 3D map of the Universe representing 20% of the entire sky.
All the stars, stellar corpses, planets, and other large, massive objects take on spherical or spheroidal shapes. Why is that universal?
NASA's space telescopes and observatories bring humanity unrivaled science images and scientific discoveries. Here's what should be next.
What are dark matter and dark energy? The large-scale structure of the cosmos encodes them both, with ESA's Euclid mission leading the way.
There are a number of factors to consider when choosing where to build a telescope. These 3 locations, on their merits, surpass all others.
National Geographic's first James Webb Space Telescope book shows us the cosmos like never before.
In theory, dark matter is cold, collisionless, and only interacts via gravity. What we see in ultra-diffuse galaxies indicates otherwise.
The Universe isn't just expansion, but the expansion itself is accelerating. So why can't we feel it in any measurable way?
Dark matter's hallmark is that it gravitates, but shows no sign of interacting under any other force. Does that mean we'll never detect it?
How do normal matter and dark matter separate by so much when galaxy clusters collide? Astronomers find the surprising, unexpected answer.
The Bullet Cluster has, for nearly 20 years, been hailed as an empirical "proof" of dark matter. Can their detractors explain it away?
All telescopes are fundamentally limited in what they can see. JWST reveals more distant galaxies than Hubble, but still can't see them all.
In the 20th century, many options abounded as to our cosmic origins. Today, only the Big Bang survives, thanks to this critical evidence.
Galaxies don't simply feed their central supermassive black holes, but the activity generated inside affects the entire galaxy and more.
JWST has puzzled astronomers by revealing large, bright, massive early galaxies. But the littlest ones pack the greatest cosmic punch.
Almost every large structure in the Universe displays a 5:1 dark matter-to-normal matter ratio. Here's how some galaxies defy that rule.
The Universe is an amazing place. Under the incredible, infrared gaze of JWST, it's coming into focus better than ever before.
Roger Babson wanted a “partial insulator, reflector, or absorber of gravity” — something, anything, that would stop or dampen it.
With JWST, Chandra, and gravitational lensing combined, evidence has emerged for the earliest black hole ever. And wow, is it a surprise!
JWST has already broken many of Hubble's cosmic records. Perhaps additional record-breakers already exist within this data-rich image?
A more distant galaxy liked the lens so much that it went and put a ring on it. Here's the science behind this remarkable cosmic object.
Named "Supernova H0pe," it shows how JWST plus gravitational lensing can be used to solve the greatest puzzle facing astronomy today.
From when its light was emitted, the El Gordo galaxy cluster might be the most massive object in all of existence. Here's how JWST sees it.
There are two types of missing, or "dark" matter: baryonic (made of normal matter) and non-baryonic. Have we finally found the normal stuff?
The farther away they get, the smaller distant galaxies look. But only up to a point, and beyond that, they appear larger again. Here’s how.
When Einstein gave General Relativity to the world, he included an extraneous cosmological constant. How did his 'biggest blunder' occur?