You might think it’s depressing to contemplate the view that the universe is likely to end in everlasting darkness — but that’s not how physicist Brian Greene rolls. “I am… Read More
After decades’ worth of mystery, it feels as if physicists are finally closing in on the nature of black holes, thanks to Nobel-winning breakthroughs like the first detections of black… Read More
Big data just might give astronomers a better grip on the answer to one of the biggest questions in physics: Exactly what’s behind the mysterious acceleration in the expansion rate… Read More
Weeks after the death of British physicist Stephen Hawking, his final research paper on the nature of our universe and its place in the wider multiverse was published today in… Read More
The European Space Agency has released the world’s most exhaustive star catalog, pinpointing the positions of nearly 1.7 billion stars. Today’s release, based on 22 months’ worth of data from… Read More
The ashes of the late British physicist Stephen Hawking will get a fitting resting place in Westminster Abbey, near the graves of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin. But you could… Read More
This week’s passing of famed British physicist Stephen Hawking has sparked reflection around the globe — and perhaps, dreamily, even throughout the universe that he dedicated so much of his life… Read More
Astronomers have detected radio waves from a time within 180 million years of the Big Bang, and they say they see signs of what may be the first stars to… Read More
This year’s Breakthrough Prizes, cast as the “Oscars of Science,” are going to genetic engineers, disease fighters, math whizzes — and the scientists on the cosmos-mapping team behind the Wilkinson Microwave… Read More
Astronomers have detected their fourth gravitational wave from the merger of two black holes, but this one marks a new milestone. It’s the first wave picked up by the Virgo… Read More
It looks as if astronomers have been way, way off on their galaxy counts: A new analysis of data from the Hubble Space Telescope suggests that the observable universe holds… Read More
The team behind the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite has released its first catalog of more than a billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy, but that’s just the start. Eventually,… Read More
About 85 percent of the mass of the universe consists of mysterious stuff known as dark matter, but a galaxy called Dragonfly 44 appears to be even darker: 99.99 percent dark,… Read More
Black holes may have gotten a bad rap. And wormholes just might be a realistic way to travel Star Trek-style after all. Years ago, the traditional wisdom about those exotic… Read More
Like the rockers in “This Is Spinal Tap,” astronomers cranked the dials on the Hubble Space Telescope up to 11 to identify what they say is the farthest-out galaxy ever detected,… Read More
Is our universe a two-dimensional hologram? It sounds like science fiction straight from “The Matrix,” but scientists are checking out the hypothesis for real. So far, the answer is no.… Read More
The Big Bang never looked, or sounded, so good: The piece de resistance for this week’s SpaceFest in Seattle is a symphonic review of 13.8 billion years of cosmic history,… Read More