When you buy through links in our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn commission. A drawing shows what the universe might look like when it’s less than 1 billion years old. | Credit: NASA, ESA and A. Schaller (for STScI) When NASA’s next great extraterrestrial observatory, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, opens… Read More »
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has made a huge impact on astronomy since it began sending data back to Earth in 2022, and one of its most revolutionary achievements has been the observation of some of the most distant galaxies ever seen. But because light doesn’t travel instantaneously — instead, it travels at about… Read More »
We may be living in a donut. It looks like Homer Simpson’s fever dream, but it could be the shape of the entire universe; to be exact, a hyperdimensional doughnut that mathematicians call 3 torus. This is just one of many possibilities for the topology of the cosmos. “We are trying to find the shape… Read More »
When a star is born or dies, or any very energetic event occurs in the universe, it emits X-rays, which are high-energy particles of light invisible to the naked eye. These x-rays are the type doctors use to take pictures of broken bones in the body. But instead of looking at the shadows cast by… Read More »
More than twenty years have passed since the discovery of dark energy. So scientists have had more than 20 years to unravel the secrets of this invisible substance that seems to tear the universe apart. But still they know almost nothing about it. In fact, dark energy may not even be a substance. This could… Read More »
A new theoretical paper suggests that the accelerating expansion of the universe may be driven by a mysterious form of matter called “particleless” that does not fit the Standard Model of particle physics. Scientists widely accept that the universe is expanding, but the reason for this expansion remains unclear. One of the most popular explanations… Read More »
By measuring how energy waves move through the sky above Earth, scientists have created a way to delve into the 13.8 billion-year history of our universe, starting from “first light.” The team, led by Johns Hopkins University astrophysicists, used an array of microwave telescopes called the Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) to map 75%… Read More »
Astronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and estimated this effect Albert Einstein More than 100 years ago, we discovered that small galaxies in the early universe had a massive impact that shaped the entire universe when it was less than 1 billion years old. The international team found that galaxies similar to the… Read More »
Imagine a future in which the universe will fall apart very soon. Eventually space-time breaks apart, making the universe uninhabitable. Imagine a future in which the universe will fall apart very soon. First come the clusters whose galaxies are moving away from each other. Later galaxies solve it. Then star systems and planets. And then… Read More »