Universe Expansion

Universe Expansion

The little book about aliens on the moon.
We may be the last generation born not knowing if we are alone in the Universe.
cosmic inflation
Today, our observable Universe extends for 46 billion light-years in all directions. But early on in our history, things were much smaller.
The concept of the warp drive is currently at odds with everything we know to be true about physics.
JADES galaxies
For many years, cosmologists have claimed the Universe is 13.8 billion years old. A new paper says no, it's 26.7 billion. How do we decide?
stephan's quintet miri JWST
What are supermassive black holes, how common are they, and how do they grow up throughout cosmic history? Listen and find out!
an image of a nebula with TRAPPIST stars in it.
The space telescope's findings challenge the notion of a galaxy brimming with life.
flight through universe CEERS JWST NASA
From the present day all the way to less than 400 million years after the Big Bang, we're seeing how the Universe grew up like never before.
Black hole jet shadow M87
Some 55 million light-years away lies the giant galaxy Messier 87. Its supermassive black hole, inside and out, looks better than ever.
distant quasar
Headlines have blared that quasar ticking confirms that time passed more slowly in the early Universe. That's not how any of this works.
map with 68 millisecond pulsars
After 15 years of monitoring 68 objects known as millisecond pulsars, we've found the Universe's background gravitational wave signal!
big bang mirage
A cute mathematical trick can "rescale" the Universe so that it isn't actually expanding. But can that "trick" survive all our cosmic tests?
an artist's rendering of a black hole in the sky.
In a distant galaxy, a cosmic dance between two supermassive black holes emits periodic flashes of light.
blue marble not 24 hours apollo 17
As the Earth spins and wobbles on its axis and revolves elliptically around the Sun, each day changes from the last. "24 hours" isn't right.
JWST deep field vs hubble
The farther away they get, the smaller distant galaxies look. But only up to a point, and beyond that, they appear larger again. Here’s how.
a drawing of a spiral with a space in the background.
The multiverse pushes beyond the limits of the scientific method. From our vantage point in the Universe, we cannot know if it's real.
a close up of two stars in the sky.
In many ways, we are still novices playing with toy models seeking to understand the stars. 
cold fuzzy dark matter simulations
In a far-reaching discovery with astrophysicist Karolina Garcia, we discuss what's in the Universe and how it grew up.
proton internal structure
If we waited long enough, would even protons themselves decay? The far future stability of the Universe depends on it.
zelda depths reionization
What do the dark recesses of the early Universe and Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom have in common? More than you could have ever hoped for.
a computer generated image of a speaker and a box.
How are we to deal with the quantization of spacetime and gravity?
periodic table
Up until 2002, we thought that the heaviest stable element was bismuth: #83 on the periodic table. That's absolutely no longer the case.
Hubble view of galaxy containing GRB 221009A BOAT
The brightest gamma-ray burst ever observed, GRB 221009A behaved in unexpected ways that might help us understand how they occur.
globular cluster terzan 5
Sun-like stars live for around 10 billion years, but our Universe is only 13.8 billion years old. So what's the maximum lifetime for a star?
NGC 1277 red and dead
With hundreds of billions of stars burning bright, some galaxies are already dead. Their inhabitants might not know it, but we're certain.
an image of a black hole in the sky.
There are 40 billion billion black holes in the universe. Here’s how our Solar System stacks up against ten of them.
warm-hot intergalactic medium sculptor wall
Just by observing the tiny amount of deuterium left over from the Big Bang, we can determine that dark matter and dark energy must exist.
a computer generated image of a wave
There is no such thing as a void in the Universe.
hubble tension
When Einstein gave General Relativity to the world, he included an extraneous cosmological constant. How did his 'biggest blunder' occur?
Artist’s impression of a gamma-ray burst
Gamma-ray bursts are so powerful they could vaporize the Earth from 200 light-years away. Recreating them in the lab is not easy.
JADES deep image
Hubble showed us what our modern day Universe looks like. JWST's big goal was to teach us how the Universe grew up. Here's where we are now.