Astronomers have spotted seven galaxies that existed just a few hundred million years after the universe’s birth, including one that may be the oldest found to date. The potential record-holding galaxy, known as UDFj-39546284, likely existed when the universe was just 380 million years old, researchers said, and may be the farthest galaxy ever seen….
A decade ago, a British philosopher put forth the notion that the universe we live in might in fact be a computer simulation run by our descendants. While that seems far-fetched, perhaps even incomprehensible, a team of physicists at the University of Washington has come up with a potential test to see if the idea…
Astronomers have found a galaxy that represents a new type, and falls within the range of active galaxies known as Seyfert galaxies. It glows green because of X-rays spewing from a gigantic black hole at its center that weighs several million to billion times more than the sun. Dubbed a “green bean” galaxy, it appears…
NASA’s long-running Voyager 1 spacecraft has entered a new region at the edge of the solar system and is close to exiting it forever. Scientists have dubbed this region the “magnetic highway” and it’s the last stop before interstellar space, or the space between stars. Voyager 1 and its twin Voyager 2 launched 35 years…
NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has detected several simple carbon-based organic compounds on Mars, but it remains unclear whether they were formed via Earthly contamination or whether they contain only elements indigenous to the planet. Speaking at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco, Curiosity mission leaders also said that the compound perchlorate—identified previously…
Caltech physicist Sean Carroll makes the search for the Higgs boson a scientific detective story. At heart is the mystery of the universe.
Messenger spacecraft finds substances similar to tar or coal in craters on planet nearest sun
A hunt for supermassive black holes reveals a monstrous one at the heart of galaxy NGC 1277, which may force theorists to rethink their understanding of black holes.
Astronomers have seen a distant galaxy that blasts away material with two trillion times the energy the sun emits — the biggest such eruption ever seen. That ejection of matter could answer an important question about the universe: why are the black holes in the centers of galaxies so light? Computer models of the early…
The hiding spots for the particles making up dark matter are narrowing, and the answer to this cosmic mystery could come within the next three or four years, scientists say. Dark matter is an elusive substance that is invisible and almost never detected, except by its gravitational pull. Yet astronomers say it likely makes up…