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Articles on Big Bang

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A colour image of G63349, one of the galaxies in the survey, created using near-infrared (VISTA telescope) and optical (Sloan telescope) data collated by the GAMA survey. (The bright green object is a nearby star.) ICRAR/GAMA

Don’t panic, but the universe is slowly dying

Our universe’s most exciting days are well behind us, with new research showing the universe is now slowly but surely dying.
The epoch of the leptons existed for nine seconds after the Big Bang. Big Bang by Shutterstock

Explainer: what are fundamental particles?

Subatomic particles have shaped and continue to shape our universe but despite perfect predictions by physicists, the theory about unseen particles is still wrong.
Something new discovered near our Milky Way. Flickr/Luis Calçada

Hidden in plain sight: the Milky Way’s new companions

Several dwarf galaxies have been discovered close to our own Milky Way and are adding to our understanding of how galaxies form. But why haven’t astronomers seen them before?
Some of the antennas of the Murchison Widefield Array radio telescope, designed to uncover what happened in the first billion years of the universe. Curtin University

Unlocking the mystery of the first billion years of the universe

More than 100 million years has been wiped off the age of the first stars but there is still the question of what happened in the first billion years of the universe. Earlier this month the European Space…
New data reveals no evidence of gravitational waves in the early universe, as observed by the BICEP2 radio telescope (pictured) near the South Pole. teffen Richter, Harvard University

Gravitational wave discovery still clouded by galactic dust

One of this century’s greatest potential discoveries concerning the origins of the universe has now fallen to galactic dust. That’s according to a new joint-analysis of all the existing data – including…
There’s a lot of dust between us and the edge of the universe. H Raab/Flickr

Has dust clouded the discovery of gravitational waves?

It’s almost three months since a team of scientists announced it had detected polarised light from the afterglow of the Big Bang. But questions are still being asked about whether cosmic dust may have…
Graduate student Justus Brevik testing the BICEP2 used to find evidence of cosmic inflation nearly 14 billion years ago. EPA/Steffen Richter/Harvard University

First hints of gravitational waves in the Big Bang’s afterglow

Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics in the US have announced overnight what they believe is the indirect detection of gravitational waves in the afterglow of the Big Bang. The…
BICEP2 has spotted something pretty special from its South Pole base. Steffen Richter (Harvard University)

Explainer: what a flexed BICEP tells us about the big bang

The cosmological community is bubbling with the news that the BICEP2 experiment may have detected gravitational waves through measuring the radiation left over from the big bang. If the findings are correct…
An explosion in the universe (artist’s impression). www.shutterstock.com

The oldest star discovery tells much about the early universe

The discovery of an ancient star formed approximately 13.6-billion years ago just after the Big Bang is telling us much about the early universe. The star – designated SMSS J031300.36-670839.3 – lies within…
Virgo consortium: the web that holds the galaxies together. Rich Murray

Filaments that bind galaxies together illuminated by a quasar

According to cosmologists, galaxies are joined together by filaments, quite literally. These filaments form the cosmic web and are made of mostly dark matter, many stars and some gas. Observing these filaments…

Catching ancient light

Cosmologists have detected a long sought component in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which will help us to further…

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