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Universe Expansion
Cosmology is unlike other sciences. When our view of the Universe changes, so does our understanding of philosophy and science itself.
Dark matter hasn't been directly detected, but some form of invisible matter is clearly gravitating. Could the graviton hold the answer?
A spherical structure nearly one billion light-years wide has been spotted in the nearby Universe, dating all the way back to the Big Bang.
In 1987, the closest supernova directly observed in nearly 400 years occurred. Will a pulsar arise from those ashes? JWST offers clues.
When it comes to predicting the energy of empty space, the two leading theories disagree by a factor of 100 googol quintillion.
Three fundamental forces matter inside an atom, but gravity is mind-bogglingly weak on those scales. Could extra dimensions explain why?
There are a few clues that the Universe isn't completely adding up. Even so, the standard model of cosmology holds up stronger than ever.
With ~400 billion stars in the Milky Way and 6-20 trillion galaxies overall, that makes for a lot of stars. But not as many as you'd think.
The biggest, brightest galaxies are the easiest to spot, but the tiniest ones teach us about how the Milky Way assembled and grew up!
5mins
Gravity defies quantum mechanics. What does that mean for a theory of everything?
The "Ring Nebula," known for almost 250 years, is so much more than a Ring. With JWST's capabilities, we're seeing more than ever before.
Life in the supremely vast cosmos is incredibly rare. We need a new vision for our living planet and for ourselves.
The Universe isn't just expanding, the expansion is also accelerating. If that's true, how will the Milky Way and Andromeda eventually merge?
Despite the vast number of planets in the Universe, Earth's specific evolutionary history guarantees that its life forms — including humans — are utterly unique.
The first observational evidence showing the Universe is expanding is 100 years old now: in 2023. Here's the story of its 100th anniversary.
9mins
Ever wonder what would happen if we got sucked into a black hole? Turns out we could live in it for a while — if it was big enough.
How fast is the Universe expanding? Two major methods disagree. New JWST data, just released, strengthens this Hubble tension even further.
Some constants, like the speed of light, exist with no underlying explanation. How many "fundamental constants" does our Universe require?
Two fundamentally different ways of measuring the expanding Universe disagree. What's the root cause of this Hubble tension?
The visible Universe extends 46.1 billion light-years from us, while we've probed scales down to as small as ~10^-19 meters.
How scientists are hearing the gravitational background "hum" of the Universe for the very first time.
Einstein's laws of gravity have been challenged many times, but have always emerged victorious. Could wide binary stars change all that?
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?
Nothing can escape from a black hole. So where do Hawking radiation, relativistic jets, and X-ray emissions around black holes come from?
Back in the 1930s, Fritz Zwicky postulated the existence of dark matter. No one took it seriously until Vera Rubin's work: 40 years later.
All stars, eventually, run out of fuel and die. Given all the stars we can see and the vast distance to them, are any of them already dead?
The hunt for the elusive particles continues.
We may be the last generation born not knowing if we are alone in the Universe.