Dark matter is thought to be ubiquitous, surrounding galaxies and helping to create the largest objects in the universe. But no one knows what it is made of. Now, a new theoretical study presents a unique and surprising scenario that may provide some of the missing pieces of the puzzle. Some of the dark matter … Read more
A team of undergraduates from the University of Chicago has identified one of the oldest known stars in the universe using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The star did not originate in our galaxy. Instead, it formed a ring of stars near it and later moved to the Milky Way. The discovery … Read more
The early universe is so far outside our understanding of how the world works that it is difficult to describe in words. At that time, the universe was not filled with stars and galaxies but with a boiling soup of quarks and gluons, with several black holes that were thrown, sometimes exploding like depth charges. … Read more
For more than two decades, textbooks and science fairs have been telling the same story that the universe is not only expanding, but accelerating. Now a new wave of data is quietly shaking up that picture and giving new life to a mysterious ending called the Big Crunch, where everything in the universe finally collapses … Read more
Learn more about how microwaves have changed the way we communicate and helped us understand the origins of the universe. The Pope is watching. This had a better job. Such thoughts probably crossed Guglielmo Marconi’s mind in 1932 as he set up a special antenna in the Vatican gardens while His Holiness Pope Pius XI … Read more