An enhanced image of galaxy clusters.
(NASA/Shutterstock)
New research using the Hubble Space Telescope reveals that galaxies may be forming at faster rates than previously believed.
Dark matter and gas in the universe. There may be more dark matter than we think.
Illustris
A study has suggested that the universe is curved like a sphere rather than flat, which may unleash a major crisis in cosmology.
AstroStar/Shutterstock
Dark sky sites can inspire new generations of stargazers, but a better long-term solution would be connecting people with the night sky where they live.
A massive galaxy cluster from the simulation, with filaments.
Joshua Borrow using C-EAGLE]
Maps of the long filaments of gas that hold the universe together may one day help us trace and unveil ‘dark matter’.
G299 was left over by a Type Ia supernova.
NASA
The rate of the universe’s expansion is in dispute. But a new kind of measurement offers hope.
Dr. Burbidge is presented with the “Woman of the Year” award in 1976, while professor at UC San Diego.
Annie Gracy/Wikipedia
In an age when women were rarely allowed in observatories, Margaret Burbidge changed how we saw the stars.
‘Unknown Pleasures’ as you’ve never seen it before…
Freeda/Shutterstock
When you look at the squiggly lines on Joy Division’s famous album cover, you’re seeing a record of lightning in outer space.
Gravity helps stars to form.
UNIMAP / L. Piazzo, La Sapienza – Università di Roma; E. Schisano / G. Li Causi, IAPS/INAF, Italy
Gravity exists because the universe is full of ‘stuff’ – here’s how it came to be.
The Milky Way stretches across the sky near the Hungarian border village of Tachty in Slovakia.
EPA/PETER KOMKA
The diameter of the Milky Way is a billion billion kilometres.
It would be nice to blast dangerous nuclear waste far away from Earth, or into the Sun where it won’t cause any harm. However, it’s not as simple as it sounds.
NASA
At the end of the day, the problem is that no-one on Earth wants nuclear waste stored near them, and it’s not safe or cost-effective to blast it into space.
The South Pole Telescope and BICEP telescopes (pictured above) may discover clues that could teach us if there was something else ‘before’ the Big Bang.
Dr. Keith Vanderlinde/NSF
Long ago in the distant past, our entire Universe was microscopic – just like an atom – and obeyed completely different rules of cause and effect.
Andrew Pontzen, Fabio Governato/Wikimedia Commons.
Our brain cells do look a lot like a map of the universe – but that doesn’t mean they’re the same thing.
“We’re all mad here.”
Shutterstock
“Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” To understand the universe, we need more Mad Hatter mathematicians.
Captured: approximately 15,000 galaxies (12,000 of which are star-forming) widely distributed in time and space.
NASA, ESA, P. Oesch (University of Geneva), and M. Montes (University of New South Wales)
Astronomers are voting to rename one of the laws of physics. The voting may have far-reaching effects leading to renaming of other laws and giving ‘forgotten’ scientists due credit.
shutterstock.
A podcast all about nothing. From the importance of doing nothing to the ill-effects of time spent in solitary confinement and what nothing means in space.
Galaxy history revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA
From a mysterious energy of empty space to parallel universes, cosmology’s view of ‘nothing’ is anything but boring.
Colorful view of universe as seen by Hubble in 2014.
NASA, ESA, H. Teplitz and M. Rafelski (IPAC/Caltech), A. Koekemoer (STScI), R. Windhorst (Arizona State University), and Z. Levay (STScI)
New observations show we don’t really understand the universe’s expansion.
Blast off.
Sergey Nivens
Nearly 50 years since the first man walked on the moon, our morals are still stranded on Earth.
About a century ago, we didn’t even know that galaxies existed.
Mai Lam/The Conversation NY-BD-CC
Pretty much as soon as we understood what galaxies were, we realised they are all moving away from each other. And the ones that are further away are moving faster. In short, the universe is expanding.
The things you can do with an amaterur telescope.
Shutterstock/AstroStar
With a little bit of knowledge and a few pieces of equipment you too can look at the night sky and see it as a cosmologist does.