The universe is expanding faster than physicists would expect. To figure out what processes underlie this fast expansion rate, some researchers are first trying to rule out what processes can’t.
New deep-space discoveries suggest the Universe is lumpy and lopsided. But if matter is distributed unevenly, we’ll have to rethink the simple geometry used in cosmological models.
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 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics went to a cosmologist who helped unlock the secrets of the Big Bang’s aftermath, and two astronomers who found a “hot Jupiter” orbiting a nearby star.
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background, which is the radiation left over from the birth of the universe.
Astronomers have found a giant void in space that explains a mysterious cold spot in the sky. But the search is already on for other voids – and finding them could undermine the discovery.
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…
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…
In March, scientists working on the BICEP2 experiment, a microwave telescope based at the South Pole, announced that they had seen ‘gravity waves’ from the early universe, created just after the Big Bang…
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…
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…
Katherine Mack, astrophysicist at the University of Melbourne, answered questions posed by the public on Reddit. The Conversation has curated the highlights. Dark Matter How do you explain dark matter…
Honorary research fellow in Physics and Astronomy and author of "The Cosmic Microwave Background - how it changed our understanding of the Universe", Cardiff University
ARC Laureate Fellow and Winthrop Research Professor at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, UWA., The University of Western Australia