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Universe Expansion
It's not only the gravity from galaxies in a cluster that reveals dark matter, but the ejected, intracluster stars actually trace it out.
Earth is actively broadcasting and actively searching for intelligent civilizations. But could our technology even detect ourselves?
Did the Milky Way form by slowly accreting matter or by devouring its neighboring galaxies? At last, we're uncovering our own history.
Known as orphaned planets, rogue planets, or planets without parent stars, these "outliers" might be the most common type of planet overall.
Our galactic home in the cosmos — the Milky Way — is only one of trillions of galaxies within our Universe. Is one of them truly our "twin?"
Electromagnetism, both nuclear forces, and even the Higgs force are mediated by known bosons. What about gravity? Does it require gravitons?
When three wise men gifted baby Jesus with gold, frankincense, and myrrh, they had no idea one was made from colliding neutron stars.
Carl Sagan was far from the first to declare we are the children of ancient stars.
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.
From a hot, dense, uniform state in its earliest moments, our entire known Universe arose. These unavoidable steps made it all possible.
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.
Even with just a momentary view of our galaxy right now, the data we collect enables us to reconstruct so much of our past history.
50 years ago, Stephen Hawking showed that black holes emit radiation and eventually decay away. That fate may now apply to everything.
The closest known star that will soon undergo a core-collapse supernova is Betelgeuse, just 640 light-years away. Here's what we'll observe.
We have very specific predictions for how particles ought to decay. When we look at B-mesons all together, something vital doesn't add up.
The Sombrero is the closest bright, massive, edge-on galaxy to us. JWST's new image, taken with MIRI, finally shows what's under its hat.
One of the fundamental constants of nature, the fine-structure constant, determines so much about our Universe. Here's why it matters.
Gravitational waves are the last signatures that are emitted by merging black holes. What happens when these two phenomena meet in space?
DESI has allowed astronomers to create an unprecedented 3D map of the Universe representing 20% of the entire sky.
For nearly 60 years, the hot Big Bang has been accepted as the best story of our cosmic origin. Could the Steady-State theory be possible?
Two parts of our Universe that seem to be unavoidable are dark matter and dark energy. Could they really be two aspects of the same thing?
"A person’s mass is made not of 'stuff' in the way we normally think about it, but rather our mass is made of energy."
Since the mid-1960s, the CMB has been identified with the Big Bang's leftover glow. Could any alternative explanations still work?
The most massive early galaxies grew up faster, and have more stars, than astronomers expected, according to JWST. What does it all mean?
There are a few small cosmic details that, if things were just a little different, wouldn't have allowed our existence to be possible.
When we see pictures from Hubble or JWST, they show the Universe in a series of brilliant colors. But what do those colors really tell us?
The last naked-eye Milky Way supernova happened way back in 1604. With today's detectors, the next one could solve the dark matter mystery.
Since 1930, type Ia supernovae have been thought to arise from white dwarfs exceeding the Chandrasekhar mass limit. Here's why that's wrong.
The race to find dark matter could grow more complex with high-energy neutrino interference.