Some years ago a group of scientists produced an exercise in probability: the Drake equation. It looks at the percentage of galaxies with the right kinds of stars, the percentage of stars forming planets, the percentage of planets hospitable to life, to intelligence, and to intelligence adequate to communicate out into space. Some scientists then…
Unsociable galaxies are unusual. Astronomers think that galaxies grow from scraggly clusters of stars to elegant spirals like the Milky Way by merging and pooling their resources. Loner galaxies like NGC 4178, which has spent most of the lifetime of the universe avoiding the company of other galaxies, are useful tools for disentangling how this…
The announcement that the “Higgs boson” had been discovered at the CERN laboratory in Geneva made news around the world. Why all the fuss? New discoveries of elementary particles have been made from time to time without attracting all this attention. It is often said that this particle provides the crucial clue to how all…
The Higgs boson is perhaps better known by its sexier nickname: the “God particle.” But in fact, many scientists, including the physicist for whom it is named, dislike the term. One thing is clear: The discovery that marked a new chapter in scientific knowledge also reignited debate over the universe’s origins — and the validity…
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of three odd galaxies that may help scientists solve a 13 billion-year cosmic mystery. The galaxies are so old and faint that astronomers nicknamed them “ghost galaxies” in a description. The objects are among the smallest and faintest galaxies near our own Milky Way galaxy, researchers said. “These…
It is natural for those not deeply involved in the half-century quest for the Higgs Boson – one of the most important missing pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that is nature – to ask why they should care about this seemingly esoteric discovery. There are three reasons. First, it caps one of the most remarkable…
Physicists at CERN delivered big news when they announced the almost certain discovery of the Higgs boson — the so-called “God particle” thought to be the key to the formation of matter, and life. They were able to detect what they believe to be the Higgs boson by firing particles around a giant, $10 billion…
A mysterious wave discovered in the Milky Way suggests our galaxy is still ringing like a bell from a galactic collision, a crash that possibly occured within the last 100 million years, scientists say. Astronomers discovered that stars north and south of the midplane of the galaxy are distributed differently, suggesting that some recent event…
A giant string of invisible dark matter has been discovered across the universe between a pair of galaxy clusters. The filament forms a bridge between two huge clusters called Abell 222 and Abell 223, which lie 2.7 billion light-years away. The universe is thought to be filled with such strings of dark matter, a mysterious…
Scientists working at the world’s biggest atom smasher near Geneva have announced the discovery of a new subatomic particle that looks remarkably like the long-sought Higgs boson. Sometimes called the “God particle” because its existence is fundamental to the creation of the universe, the hunt for the Higgs involved thousands of scientists from all over…