The discovery of CDG-2, a galaxy that's more than 99.9% dark matter, could reveal a new population of ultra-faint galaxies. But is it real?

Thanks to modern tech, Earth is now considered a ‘detectable’ planet. Astrophysicist Sara Seager explains how this idea can lead us to discovering life elsewhere in our universe.

Forget about the terawatt lasers we're making on Earth. The Universe makes natural ones thousands of times more powerful than the Sun.

The fundamental building blocks of reality are indivisible: quanta that cannot be split or divided. Our understanding remains incomplete.

Long after the last star burns out, the Universe will experience its end state: a heat death. Will everything prior then be meaningless?

Military satellite research brought us GPS. Astronomers influenced medical imaging tech. What would be invented after we discover alien life? Professor Sara Seager explains the consequences of such a groundbreaking discovery.

The Universe is expanding, the expansion is accelerating, and some galaxies even recede faster-than-light. Can we see a change in real time?

Before Sun-like stars die, they transition from AGB red giants into preplanetary nebulae. Here's how Hubble sees the famous Egg Nebula.

Here in our modern Universe, it's cosmic dust that forms planets, complex molecules, and enables life. But how did the Universe create it?

13.8 billion years have passed since the Big Bang, but many stars will survive for longer than that. What's the longest-lived a star can be?

Many collaborations have used JWST to take deep-field images: some wider and some deeper than others. Here's how it can surpass them all.

The Universe formed stars, galaxies, and even galaxy clusters extremely early on in our cosmos. This new marvel is one more JWST surprise.

At the upper limits of what's energetically possible, cosmic rays still persist. What happens if a human gets hit by the most energetic one?

Our great hope is that today's indirect, astrophysical evidence will someday lead to successful direct detection. What if that's impossible?

Our view of the world, the Universe, and ourselves can change with just one glimpse of what's out there. It's happened many times before.

Outer space begins just over 100 kilometers up, but what we can see extends for billions of light-years. Here's what all of it looks like.

Even in an expanding Universe, we expect both redshifted and blueshifted galaxies. But nearly every one we see is redshifted. Here's why.

With unprecedented resolution, wavelength sensitivity, and light-gathering power, JWST reveals our cosmos like no other observatory ever.

Gravitational lenses arise when foreground masses and background light sources properly align. Einstein rings are rare, but crosses abound.

It's not about particle-antiparticle pairs falling into or escaping from a black hole. A deeper explanation alters our view of reality.

The VENUS survey isn't about planets at all, but about finding multiply-lensed supernovae. The ambition? To save the expanding Universe.

Back in 1604, Johannes Kepler discovered the Milky Way's last naked-eye supernova. Here's how NASA's Chandra sees it over the 21st century.

The seeds of cosmic structure that were planted back during the Big Bang grew into the cosmic web we see today. What is it telling us?

When objects are gravitationally bound, they cannot escape from one another's influence. How does that work within the expanding Universe?

Even the youngest galaxies are often dust-rich, even with very low levels of heavy elements. Nearby dwarf galaxy Sextans A explains why.

Astronomers have found starless gas clouds before, but Cloud 9 might be the most pristine one of all, with big lessons for cosmic history.

In a galaxy less than 300 million years after the Big Bang, oxygen's presence abounds. That's expected; its absence would truly be profound.

In general relativity, matter and energy curve spacetime, which we experience as gravity. Why can't there be an "antigravity" force?

The very word "quantum" makes people's imaginations run wild. But chances are you've fallen for at least one of these myths.

There will always be "wolf-criers" whose claims wither under scrutiny. But aliens are certainly out there, if science dares to find them.