Cosmology

Hints of a previously unknown, primordial form of the substance could explain why the cosmos now seems to be expanding faster than theory predicts

Fred Hoyle and George Gamow were brilliant iconoclasts who reached opposite conclusions about the expanding universe (for the record, Gamow was right)

A battle for the future of American stargazing is about to begin—and the stakes are sky high

If such an object a mere 1,000 times bigger than an atom passed through your body, the result would not be pretty

Physicists have new ideas about why the energy of empty space is so much weaker than it is predicted to be

Large galaxies are thought to form gradually, across billions of years of cosmic time. So why do astronomers keep finding them in the youthful early universe?

Astronomers can’t understand how distant galaxies grew so big so fast

New evidence from neutrinos points to one of several theories about why the cosmos is made of matter and not antimatter

But more data are needed before physicists know for sure

Gravitational waves attributed to the collision of two neutron stars could have been produced by something much stranger

The theory, which emerged in the 1970s as a way to unify the fundamental forces of nature, has profoundly shaped the landscape of particle physics

Physicists attempting to unify the theories of  gravity and quantum mechanics have long thought practical experiments were out of reach, but new proposals offer a chance to test the quantum nature of gravity on a tabletop