universe

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  • A new telescope prototype shows how the LISA mission will look for gravitational waves in space.

    NASA's newest telescope can detect gravitational waves from colliding black holes

    A new series of telescopes scheduled to launch in the mid-2030s will look for gravitational waves in space.

    Danny Gallagher
    10.22.2024
  • James Webb Space Telescope image of Galaxy cluster 'knot' in the early universe

    James Webb telescope captures 'knot' of galaxies in the early universe

    A James Webb telescope image has unveiled a 'knot' of galaxies from 11.5 billion years ago.

    Jon Fingas
    10.20.2022
  • Hubble Space Telescope

    Hubble may have spotted the most distant star to date

    The Hubble Space Telescope may have spotted the most distant star to date — 12.9 billion light-years away.

    Jon Fingas
    03.30.2022
  • Hubble, ALMA detect 'dead' early galaxies

    Hubble telescope helps find six 'dead' galaxies from the early universe

    The Hubble telescope and ALMA have found six 'dead' early galaxies that stopped forming stars unusually quickly.

    Jon Fingas
    09.26.2021
  • A Dark Matter map from the Dark Energy Survey.

    The best dark matter map to date raises questions about the universe

    Scientists have released the most precise map of dark matter to date, but it only serves to highlight mysteries in the universe.

    Jon Fingas
    05.30.2021
  • NERSC Perlmutter AI supercomputer

    New AI supercomputer will help create the largest-ever 3D map of the universe

    A new AI supercomputer, Perlmutter, is powerful enough that it will be used to help make the largest-ever 3D map of the universe.

    Jon Fingas
    05.29.2021
  • NASA SPHEREx mission studying the early universe

    SpaceX will launch a NASA mission to study the history of the universe

    NASA has chosen SpaceX to launch SPHEREx, a mission that will study the origins of the universe.

    Jon Fingas
    02.05.2021
  • Pulsar light reaches Earth in a sea of background gravitational waves from the universe

    Scientists may have found the background ripples of the universe

    Scientists have found a strong signal that might represent the universe's background gravitational waves.

    Jon Fingas
    01.18.2021
  • Milky way over the sky, view from the Southern Hemisphere

    Scientists find the universe's 'missing matter' using mysterious cosmic bursts

    One of astrophysics' longest-running mysteries has been solved.

    Rachel England
    06.01.2020
  • shot of light blurred to create celestial image of sun going supernova or passing through stars in a galaxy at high speed akin to visuals in a science fiction film or movie. The effect had been achieved naturally in the shooting stage and not with post production blurring.

    Astronomers observe the brightest supernova on record

    In 2016, astronomers spotted the brightest supernova ever observed. They watched as the supernova, named SN2016aps, continued to emit radiation for more than 1,000 days.

  • NAOJ/M. Tanaka

    Discovery shows early galaxies could have very short lives

    You'd think that galaxies from the young universe would still be thriving, but that's not necessarily the case. Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute and the National Observatory of Japan have discovered the farthest known dying galaxy (that is, with greatly suppressed star formation) known to date at about 12 billion light-years away. In other words, it was already waning roughly 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang -- the first galaxies had come into being about a billion years earlier. The team used a combination of Keck telescope systems and the Very Large Telescope to measure the motion of stars and learn that the galaxy's core was nearly fully formed.

    Jon Fingas
    01.20.2020
  • European Space Agency

    Scientists confirm that plasma ‘sloshes’ around in galaxy clusters

    For the first time, scientists have observed signs of plasma "flowing, splashing and sloshing" in a galaxy cluster. This kind of motion has been predicted, but it was only theoretical. Now, with data on how the plasma moves, researchers hope to discover how galaxy clusters, the largest systems in the Universe, form, evolve and behave. Their findings have been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

  • NASA, ESA and the HST Frontier Fields team (STScI), Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

    Supercomputer creates millions of virtual universes

    How do you understand the development of galaxies when even the younger examples are frequently billions of years old? Simulate as many universes as you can, apparently. Researchers at the University of Arizona have used the school's Ocelote supercomputer as a "UniverseMachine" that generates millions of mini universes to see how well they line up with the real cosmos. Rather than try to portray every nuance of the whole universe (even a single fully modeled galaxy would require far too much computing power), the team devised a system that had just enough resolution to scale from supernovae to a "sizeable chunk" of observed space. Each virtual universe had a different set of rules, and it was largely a matter of seeing which simulations lined up the closest with real data.

    Jon Fingas
    08.11.2019
  • GMTO

    The world’s largest telescope is one step closer to completion

    The world's largest telescope is one step closer to completion. This month, the team working on the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) completed the second of seven primary mirror segments, a process that began in January 2012.

  • Makhbubakhon Ismatova via Getty Images

    Scientists think some supermassive black holes didn’t start as stars

    Despite the fact that scientists now have a real image of a supermassive black hole, they still have plenty of questions about the objects. Now, astrophysicists at Western University may have a new explanation for how some black holes formed. In research published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters today, Shantanu Basu and Arpan Das suggest that not all black holes emerge from star remnants. Their model may help scientists explain the formation of extremely massive black holes at a very early stage of the universe's development.

  • NASA/SOFIA/L. Proudfit/D.Rutter

    NASA finally found evidence of the universe's earliest molecule

    Scientists have long suspected that, around 100,000 years after the big bang, helium and hydrogen combined to form the first molecule, helium hydride. That helped the universe begin to cool and led to the formation of stars. But, despite decades of searching, scientists could never locate helium hydride in space -- until now.

  • Cappan via Getty Images

    Watch the first ever image of a black hole be livestreamed here

    What does a black hole look like? Black, probably. And big. That sounds pretty vague, but as the gravitational forces of a black hole are so strong even light is overpowered by them, we've never had a comprehensive image of one before. Until now. Today, scientists from six cities around the world will unveil the first ever image of a black hole -- called Sagittarius A* -- and you can watch the historic announcement live online. (Update: the image has been released. Check it out here!)

    Rachel England
    04.10.2019
  • Berkeley Lab

    Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument lenses get their first look at space

    Scientists are one step closer to precisely 3D mapping the galaxy and better understanding dark energy. For years, a team of more than 70 international organizations have been building the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which will allow us to see the sky in a way we never have before. Earlier this week, DESI reached a "first light" milestone when scientists produced the first focused images with the instrument's precision lenses. The images show the Whirlpool Galaxy -- an estimated 23 million light years from Earth.

  • NASA/ESA/Hubble Space Telescope

    Scientists more accurately gauge the brightness of the universe

    You'd think that it would be virtually impossible to determine the collective brightness of the observable universe, but a team of scientists has come surprisingly close. They've completed the most accurate measurement of the universe's light to date using both reams of Fermi Space Telescope gamma ray data and some unusual tricks. They searched for the background light of the universe by studying data from over 700 blazars, or black hole gamma ray bursts pointed directly at Earth. They noticed that the blazars indicate the brightness of the background light between galaxies as they cut through it. And when it takes billions of years for those gamma rays to reach human eyes, you can gauge the light levels for large portions of the universe's past -- 90 percent of its history, researcher Alberto Dominguez told Popular Science.

    Jon Fingas
    12.02.2018
  • Chris Williamson via Getty Images

    Stephen Hawking’s last paper has been published on multiverse theory

    The last paper Stephen Hawking wrote before he died has now been published in the Journal of High Energy Physics. Though some version of the paper has been available on the preprint site arXiv since last year, it was submitted to the journal for review just days before Hawking passed, and it deals with some theoretical physics about the many universes that might have been created by the Big Bang.