A recent study shows that the Earth's water could come directly from the oxygen and hydrogen present in the rocks that formed it, and not from a late supply by asteroids.
Thanks to the discovery of five twinkling galaxies in a rare alignment, astronomers have been able to calculate — for the first time — the properties and geometry of an invisible gas cloud in space.
Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker (Curtin / ICRAR) and The GLEAM Team
Some of the baby radio galaxies found may not be 'babies' at all. Rather, they may be 'angsty teens', rapidly growing into adults much faster than researchers had anticipated.
New mathematics have shown that lines of energy can be used to describe the universe.
zf L/Moment via Getty Images
Field theory describes the universe as energy flowing along unending lines. With this perspective, it is possible to define a new fundamental building block of matter.
Diligence, technological progress and a little luck have together solved a 20 year mystery of the cosmos.
CSIRO/Alex Cherney
Cosmologists had only been able to find half the matter that should exist in the universe. With the discovery of a new astronomical phenomenon and new telescopes, researchers just found the rest.
No one knows what kicked off the Big Bang that eventually allowed the stars to begin forming.
Adolf Schaller for STScI
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.
Dark matter and gas in the universe. There may be more dark matter than we think.
Illustris
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
Our brain cells do look a lot like a map of the universe – but that doesn't mean they're the same thing.
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.
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.