Cosmology

Seen just 800 million years after the big bang, an object called LAP1-B is a galactic building block that seems to hold some of the first stars to ever shine

Models giving dark matter more complex behavior could help solve multiple cosmic mysteries

Researchers are perplexed by a galaxy that seems too large and too dusty for its place in cosmic history, less than a half-billion years after the big bang

A physicist explores how poetry, pop culture and imagination help us understand spacetime and our place in the universe

After decades of planning, NASA’s Artemis program is giving astronomers their long-awaited moonshot

A single subatomic particle from deep space had the same energy as a baseball pitch, and scientists still don’t know how it got here

Decades of data have suggested the universe is flat, much like an infinite plane. But a new analysis reveals deep flaws in that simple conclusion

Long ago, the cosmos might have been a black hole factory—and these primordial objects are even weirder than you think

A major defense against everything space throws at us, Earth’s magnetic field may even protect the moon from damaging galactic cosmic rays

Just how big can a star become? The answer depends on when in cosmic history you’re asking the question

This enormous chain of hundreds of galaxies—a cosmic filament—is twisting through space 400 million light-years away

Physicists cannot access anything that existed before the start of time and space, but they have theories