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 […]

After a wait of 397 years in orbit, we’re finally getting a truly ‘Great’ Conjunction. Recently, December 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn finally met. Looking towards the southwest skies from […]

It doesn’t propagate at infinite speeds, and that’s a problem for Newton. When you look at the Sun, the light you’re seeing isn’t the light that’s being emitted right now. Instead, […]

With just a few more neutron star mergers, we’ll have the best constraints of all-time. How fast is the Universe expanding? Ever since the expanding Universe was first discovered nearly […]

If the multiverse is real, where does all the energy for it come from? One of the biggest scientific puzzles, even given our knowledge of the Big Bang, is to understand […]

We’ve found our first ones! The question is: how did they survive? Over the past 2 years, an exciting development has finally arisen: scientists have measured a large number of small, […]

If we’re migrating slowly away, is our speed changing, too? Every year, planet Earth completes one revolution around the Sun while spinning on its axis. On a year-to-year basis, our […]

Our ultimate fate depends on something we’ve barely begun to measure. One of the biggest mysteries in all of physics is dark energy. According to our best observations, the Universe cannot […]

A cosmic puzzle is finally solved, as new observations answer the question of why this galaxy exists at all. For the last couple of years, astronomy has had a tremendous puzzle […]

Don’t wait until Christmas to gift a telescope this year. All throughout the year, two bright lights have stood out in the post-sunset skies. Earlier this year, on March 31, 2020, […]

And can scientists even agree on what ‘nothing’ means? The more curious we get about the great cosmic unknowns, the more unanswered questions our investigations of the Universe will reveal. […]

How many potentially habitable planets are there? We sincerely don’t know. One of the most compelling scientific goals humanity has set for itself is to find extraterrestrial life: biological activity originating […]

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 […]

They’re not just a theoretical prediction of quantum gravity. They should be detectable, too. The Universe, if you look at it closely and carefully enough, is fundamentally quantum in nature. […]

Often viewed as a theoretical, calculational tool only, the Lamb Shift proved their existence. If you spend enough time listening to theoretical physicists, it starts to sound like there are […]

We haven’t discovered life beyond our Solar System yet, but we’re closer than ever before. Over the past 30 years, we’ve gone from zero exoplanets to thousands. With each new […]

Entropy always increases, but that doesn’t mean it was zero to start with. One of the most inviolable laws in the Universe is the second law of thermodynamics: that in any […]

Once only dark energy remains, empty space still won’t be completely empty. Imagine, if you dare, the very end of the Universe. The stars — past, present, and future — have all burned out. […]

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 […]

Known as the ‘North Star,’ Polaris won’t stay that way forever. Planet Earth spins a full 360°, about its axis, every 24 hours. The Earth in orbit around the Sun, with […]

Are atoms, humans, planets, and galaxies destined to expand, too? One of the most revolutionary discoveries of the past century was the fact that the Universe is not eternally static and […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The Twin Jet nebula, shown here, is a stunning example of a bipolar preplanetary nebula. At the center, a dying star is in the final stages of life where it […]