Successful as it is, there are notable unsolved questions with the standard big bang theory, which suggests that the universe began as a seemingly impossible “singularity,” an infinitely small point containing an infinitely high concentration of matter, expanding in size to what we observe today. The theory of inflation, a super-fast expansion of space proposed…
By combining the light of three powerful infrared telescopes, an international research team has observed the active accretion phase of a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy tens of millions of light years away, a method that has yielded an unprecedented amount of data for such observations. The resolution at which they…
Messages from the early Universe: Bright and brief, γ-ray bursts hold clues to cosmic history.
Life-bearing planets may exist in vast numbers in the space between stars in our Milky Way galaxy. An international team of researchers argue a few hundred thousand billion free-floating Earth-sized planets may exist in the space between stars. Writing in the journal Astrophysics and Space Science, they propose the planets originated in the early universe…
One of Europe’s main contributions to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is built and ready to ship to the US. The Mid-Infrared Instrument (Miri) will gather key data as the $9 billion observatory seeks to identify the first starlight in the Universe. James Webb – regarded as the successor to Hubble – is due…
The intense energy and winds from gigantic black holes can block the birth of stars as scientists have long suspected, a new analysis of distant galaxies reveals. Most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, are thought to have supermassive black holes at their hearts. Some of these monster black holes are relatively calm, but others,…
A sprawling collection of galaxies and star clusters surrounding our own Milky Way is challenging long-standing theories on the existence of dark matter, the mysterious substance thought to pervade the universe. The structure of satellite galaxies and star clusters around the Milky Way is so vast that it reaches across a million light-years – 10…
An entirely new type of particle has been discovered by scientists using the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), near Geneva, Switzerland. The discovery of the new particle, called “neutral Xi_b^star baryon,” was made by the CMS experiment, one of six separate particle physics experiments running at the LHC….
Invisible dark matter particles may regularly pass through our bodies, and dozens to thousands of these particles may be colliding with atoms inside us every year, according to a new calculation. Dark matter is one of the greatest scientific mysteries of our time — an invisible substance thought to make up five-sixths of all matter…
The grand scheme, a stepping-stone to string theory, is still high on physicists’ wish lists. But if no solid evidence surfaces soon, it could begin to have a serious PR problem