Astronomers Might See Dark Matter by Staring into the Void
Vast reaches of mostly empty space could offer superior odds for detecting the invisible substance thought to make up more than 80 percent of the material in the universe
Our Sun Could Someday Reveal the Surfaces of Alien Earths
In the far future, we could reveal detailed views of distant worlds by turning our home star into a gravitational lens
Physicists Find a Shortcut to Seeing an Elusive Quantum Glow
Once considered practically unseeable, a phenomenon called the Unruh effect might soon be revealed in laboratory experiments
China Plans Asteroid Missions, Space Telescopes and a Moon Base
In the next five years, the nation hopes to launch a robotic craft to an asteroid, two lunar missions and an orbital observatory
Major African Radio Telescope Will Help to Image Black Holes
The $25-million facility in Namibia will be the continent’s first millimeter-range astronomical observatory
Astronomers Find First Ever Rogue Black Hole Adrift in the Milky Way
Weighing in at seven times the mass of our sun, the dark object is by far the best-yet candidate for a free-floating stellar-mass black hole
Could Echoes from Colliding Black Holes Prove Stephen Hawking’s Greatest Prediction?
Subtle signals from black hole mergers might confirm the existence of “Hawking radiation”—and gravitational-wave detectors may have already seen them
Space Rocks Keep Hitting Jupiter: What’s the Deal with That?
The giant planet’s hefty gravitational tug helps explain a spate of recent asteroid strikes
Astrophysicists Unveil Glut of Gravitational-Wave Detections
The latest bounty of 35 events features oddball black holes and a miniature neutron star
Could Gravity’s Quantum Origins Explain Dark Energy?
A potentially transformative theoretical study links a new model of quantum gravity with the universe’s bizarrely accelerating rate of expansion
This Supernova Will Make a Ghostly Reappearance in 2037
A chance celestial alignment is allowing astronomers to witness a distant star’s explosive death, again and again
Singularities Can Exist Outside Black Holes—in Other Universes
Recent work has shown how “naked singularities” might defy the cosmic censorship conjecture