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Universe Expansion
Ancient helium-3 from the dawn of time leaks from the Earth, offering clues to our planet’s formation. A key question is where it leaks from.
Dr. Tyson explains where we might find aliens, why "dark matter" is a misleading term, and why you can blame physics for your favorite team's loss.
Single objects rarely change the course of an entire scientific field. Distant object GNz7q, a galaxy-quasar hybrid, might do exactly that.
For some reason, the charges on the electron and proton are equal and opposite, and their numbers are equal, too. But why?
As far as we can tell, there's no limit to how far it goes on; only a limit to how far we can see. Could the Universe truly be infinite?
We've fooled ourselves before with galaxies that look just like this one. The evidence we have simply isn't strong enough.
In the latest edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast, we talk with soon-to-be Dr. Arianna Long about galaxies, from birth to today.
Our Universe requires dark matter in order to make sense of things, astrophysically. Could massive photons do the trick?
The Hubble Space Telescope, 32 years after its launch, broke the all-time record for most distant star. It won't do better.
The story of how Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were made isn't a universal one. Some gas giants were built different.
The light from Earendel took 12.9 billion years to reach Hubble. The star is millions of times brighter than our Sun and 50 times as massive.
To study the origin of the Universe, we could build a constellation of six expensive spacecraft — or we could just use the Moon.
For some reason, when we talk about the age of stars, galaxies, and the Universe, we use "years" to measure time. Can we do better?
Galactic archaeology has uncovered a spectacular find: the Milky Way already existed more than 13 billion years ago.
To answer any physical question, you must ask the Universe itself. But what happens when the answers aren't around anymore?
Even a tiny sliver of the Universe can reveal the cosmic story of what's out there and how it came to be the way it is today.
The James Webb Space Telescope could help scientists learn about the cosmic dark ages and how they ended.
In 1990, we only knew of the planets in our own Solar System. Today, the exoplanet count is more than 5000. Here's what we've learned.
Empty, intergalactic space is just 2.725 K: not even three degrees above absolute zero. But the Boomerang Nebula is even colder.
When we started imaging the Universe with Hubble, every star had four "spikes" coming from it. Here's why Webb will have more.
The far infrared reveals both the coldest and hottest gas in the Universe, and can teach us what no other wavelength range can.
In the night sky for March of 2022, only stars and the Moon, not planets, will greet you. The real show, however, arrives just before dawn.
Despite all that we've learned about the Universe, there remain unanswered, and possibly unanswerable, questions. Could "God" be the answer?
If dark matter exists in a large halo in our galaxy, made up of particles, then it's passing through us constantly. But how much?
When we look out at the Universe, even with Hubble, we're only seeing the closest, biggest, brightest galaxies. Here's where the rest are.
There's a limit to how large planets can be, and it's only about double the radius of Jupiter. At least, so far.
Professional astronomy images are the gold standard. But this Large Magellanic Cloud composite is the amateur community's best image ever.
Is the multiverse real? It's one of the hottest questions in all of theoretical physics. We invited two astrophysicists to join the debate.
Life is possible because of asymmetries, such as an imbalance between matter and antimatter and the "handedness" (chirality) of molecules.
Out of all the galaxies we know, only a few little ones are missing dark matter. At last, we finally understand why.