Signals from the first stars to form in the universe have been picked up by a table-sized detector in a west Australian desert. The find also hints at an early interaction with dark matter.
What caused the Big Bang is still a mystery. And that’s just one of the many unanswered questions, in spite of everything we do know about the birth of the Universe.
Is dark energy just an illusion, as is often suggested? To resolve the dilemma, interpreting the basic principles of general relativity in a complex Universe may need a rethink.
These ripples in the very fabric of the universe were hypothesized by Einstein a century ago. Now scientists have detected them for the third time in a year and a half – ushering in a new era in astrophysics.
It used to take weeks to find any of these mysterious signals from deep in space but when the new telescope started looking it found one within days. Then another.
The recipe book for galaxy formation may need to be rewritten after the discovery of a massive galaxy that stopped making new stars early in the Universe’s history.
Astronomers are surprised by what they’re finding out about galaxies that formed in the early days of our universe, now that sensitive telescopes allow direct observation, not the inference of old.
After months of running in test-mode, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope is now gathering data at an incredible rate to give us a new look at how our universe works.