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
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…
The universe is such a big place that it is easy to get baffled by the measurements that astronomers make. The size of UY Scuti, possibly one of the largest stars we have observed to date, is certainly…
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
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…
Many different worlds but a finite number.
Flickr/fdecomite
Parallel universes – worlds where the dinosaur-killing asteroid never hit, or where Australia was colonised by the Portuguese – are a staple of science fiction. But are they real? In a radical paper published…
This artist’s impression of the Milky Way galaxy. The blue halo of material surrounding the galaxy indicates the expected distribution of the mysterious dark matter.
ESO/L. Calçada
While invisible, dark matter completely dominates our Milky Way, recent measurements of just how much dark matter there is have revealed a bit of a mystery. In a paper published today in the Astrophysical…
Looking for proof? No such thing in most research.
Flickr/Paul Mazumdar
UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH: What do we actually mean by research and how does it help inform our understanding of things? Those people looking for proof to come from any research in science will be sadly disappointed…
Gemini North observatory, on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, shoots a laser beam into the night sky to create an ‘artificial star’, part of a process that helps astronomers remove blurring from any images of galaxies.
Gemini Observatory and Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy
A supermassive black hole has been found in an ultracompact dwarf galaxy – the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive black hole. This finding, published today in Nature, suggests that supermassive…
The universe still holds many secrets.
Aaron Landry/Flickr
Recent observations suggest that there is something not quite right with our view of our universe – that something is skewing our view of the oldest radiation arriving at our telescopes. What’s causing…
If there’s a multiverse out there can we see it?
Flickr/Maciek Bielec
The recent BICEP2 observations – of swirls in the polarisation of the cosmic microwave background – have been proclaimed as many things, from evidence of the Big Bang and gravitational waves to something…
A 13th century bishop’s theory about the formation of the universe has intriguing parallels with the theory of multiple universes. This was uncovered by the the Ordered Universe project at Durham University…
Graduate student Justus Brevik testing the BICEP2 used to find evidence of cosmic inflation nearly 14 billion years ago.
EPA/Steffen Richter/Harvard University
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…
Our unfolding understanding of the universe is marked by epic searches and we are now on the brink of discovering something that has escaped detection for many years. The search for gravity waves has been…
The oldest star is out there somewhere. But which one is it?
www.shutterstock.com
There is a myth that goldfish have a three-second memory, and I sometimes wonder if the same is true about the part of the human mind that deals with science in the news. This week, the international media…
An explosion in the universe (artist’s impression).
www.shutterstock.com
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…
Astronomers have been searching for a mysterious substance called “dark matter” since the 1930s. Most scientists still believe it exists, despite many fruitless decades. Now we propose a new theory of…