Cosmology

Astronomers watching galaxies collide found evidence of nongravitational forces that could suggest dark matter interacts with itself
 

The most far-seeing search ever performed for “Dyson spheres” and other artifacts of “astroengineering” comes up empty. Where is everybody?

A survey has charted clusters and voids of invisible matter over hundreds of millions of light-years

A recent article by Samuel Arbesman in the science magazine Nautilus discusses the extraordinary sounding possibility that – just perhaps – a search for extraterrestrial intelligence could be made by looking at our DNA.

Along with black holes, neutron stars are the result of stars collapsing under gravity once their fuel burns out, until their density is about the same as that of the nucleus of an atom, at which point the protons and electrons “melt” into pure neutrons.

The American Physical Society is holding its annual April Meeting at the moment in Baltimore, Maryland, and one of the highlights, research-wise, comes to us courtesy of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) collaboration.

One of the coolest—and most stressful–moments of my career took place November 7, 1996, when I was a staff writer for Scientific American.

The program will not repeat past mistakes, officials vow, and will launch as planned in 2018
 

It's been a long time coming, but this week NASA's Mars Opportunity rover completed the first-ever Martian marathon. After landing on the Red Planet in January 2004 on a mission originally planned to only last 90 days, Opportunity has instead endured for more than a decade, and has taken eleven years and two months to [...]

Black holes break theories. These sites of extremely large masses in extremely small spaces invoke both of the behemoths of modern physics—general relativity (which rules over large masses) and quantum mechanics (which reigns in small spaces).

When the upgraded Large Hadron Collider restarts it will be capable of energies never before achieved, potentially unveiling novel particles and opening a window on the inner workings of the universe
 

Shortly after 7:30 am Eastern time this morning, a seven-year space voyage at last reached its final destination: NASA's Dawn mission entered orbit around Ceres, a small, icy world orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter.