Astrophysics

A new estimate finds that the Milky Way, once thought to be twice as massive as Andromeda, may actually only have half our neighbor galaxy's mass. Christopher Intagliata reports 

 

In a month’s time, the end result of two-and-a-half years of research, thinking, writing, re-writing, re-re-writing, editing, mulling, puzzling, coffee-drinking, beer-swilling, swearing, and tweaking will hit the shelves in the form of my new book The Copernicus Complex.

Is energy always conserved, even in the case of the expanding universe?
 

Looking for a few good popular math books? In the latest New York Times Book Review, I look at five terrific recent ones: Jordan Ellenberg's How Not to Be Wrong, David J.

Our universe may have started not with a big bang but with a big bounce—an implosion that triggered an explosion, all driven by exotic quantum-gravitational effects

A shadow cosmos, woven silently into our own, may have its own rich inner life

Is the theory at the heart of modern cosmology deeply flawed?

Total energy must be conserved. Every student of physics learns this fundamental law. The trouble is, it does not apply to the universe as a whole

Deep down, the particles and forces of the universe are a manifestation of exquisite geometry

An experiment going up outside of Chicago will attempt to measure the intimate connections among information, matter and spacetime. If it works, it could rewrite the rules for 21st-century physics

All stars are born in groups but then slowly disperse into space. A new theory seeks to explain how these groups form and fall apart or, in rare cases, persist for hundreds of millions of years

Proof of parallel universes radically different from our own may still lie beyond the domain of science