The term ‘Big Bang’ might make you think of a massive explosion. Put the thought out of your head. Rather than an explosion, it was the start of everything in the universe.
The launch of Hubble Space Telescope on April 24, 1990. This photo captures the first time that there were shuttles on both pad 39a and 39b.
NASA
Thirty years ago the Hubble Space Telescope began snapping photos of distant stars, providing a time machine that has taken astronomers back to when the universe was less than a billion years old.
An enhanced image of galaxy clusters.
(NASA/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]
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
“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.
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)