But the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope compels us to add, “so far.” Beginning with its 1990 launch, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope revolutionized our conception of the Universe. This photo of […]

“Hubble’s Law” is only an approximation, and breaks down when we need it most. From anywhere in the Universe, you can choose to look out at any other galaxy that’s present. […]

Despite all the challenges, Hubble has vindicated this discovery. Practically everywhere we look in the Universe, the large-scale objects that we see — small galaxies, large galaxies, groups and clusters of galaxies, […]

And a combination of all three might take us farther than ever. If you want to see the farthest objects in the Universe, you have to know not only where to […]

The last image puts it all in perspective. Compared to what we find in our Solar System, galaxies are truly enormous. The Sun may be 109 times the diameter of […]

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 […]

Just say no to artist’s illustrations. This is what the Universe actually looks like. The Universe we observe often surpasses our greatest imaginings. This 20-year time-lapse of stars near the center […]

A new survey, the DESI Legacy Imaging Survey, has found more lenses than all others put together. One of Einstein’s most revolutionary predictions is that mass bends light. During a […]

No matter how your year went, Hubble’s views of the Universe never disappoint. Year after year, Hubble’s telescopic views are unparalleled. Saturn, its rings, and 5 of its moons are […]

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 […]

There’s more light than we can account for, and we’ve just measured it robustly for the first time. When we look out at the darkest night skies available on Earth, even […]

You might be inclined to modify gravity instead, but those ideas have grossly unequal evidence supporting them. What is it, exactly, that you’re supposed to do when the predictions of […]

Yes, we’d all die. But for 21 minutes, we’d have the ride of a lifetime. One of the most remarkable facts about the Universe is this: in the absence of […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope will truly usher in a new era of astronomy. If you want to find the very first galaxy of all, you have to understand not […]

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 […]

There are exposed planetary cores orbiting stars, and we may have already found them. When we take a look at the planets in our Solar System, there’s a pretty clear difference […]

We still don’t know how it came to be this way. Every once in a while, we find an object in the Universe that completely mystifies us. For generations, astronomers have […]

Without a little help from Einstein, we couldn’t have made this discovery. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, currently celebrating its 30th anniversary, still churns out novel discoveries. The Hubble eXtreme Deep […]

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 […]

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 […]

Its record-holding galaxy is 32 billion light-years away, in a Universe that’s only 13.8 billion years old. On April 24, 2020, humanity celebrates the 30th anniversary of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. […]

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 […]

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 […]

The images themselves will take your breath away, but the science we can extract from them is truly revolutionary and spectacular. Dark matter may be one of the most mysterious […]

Without this one ingredient, there wouldn’t be enough ‘glue’ to hold the Universe together. Of all the things in the Universe to be thankful for — the stars, planets, atoms, molecules, and […]

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 […]

Young galaxies are bright and blue; old galaxies are red and dead. So how did this old, red galaxy form so early? The observable Universe contains two trillion distinct galaxies, but […]