Universe

The Xuntian Space Telescope is China’s entry in a global race to unlock the secrets of dark energy, and it will now lift off no earlier than mid-2025

The earliest active supermassive black hole ever seen offers clues on how these enigmatic objects first formed

The James Webb Space Telescope is gazing across the universe to find galaxies close to the “cosmic dawn”—and you can explore them from the palm of your hand

Several unexplained measurements are threatening to upend scientists’ understanding of the universe’s origin and fate

The darkness of the night sky offers a profound insight on the nature of the cosmos

Quantum physics’ oddities seem less surprising if you stop thinking of atoms as tennis balls, and instead more like waves pushing through water

A surprisingly complex galaxy cluster suggests that in the search for dark matter, nothing is as simple as it seems

The European Space Agency says a software patch restored stability to its cosmos-mapping Euclid spacecraft — but slower operations could extend the mission

A colorful quirk of quantum optics could lead to significant advances in quantum communication and computing

In theory, physicists knew that antimatter should behave just like matter under gravity’s pull. But until now, no one had ever seen it happen

This enormous structure could help explain processes close to the dawn of time—or it could be a random cosmic fluke

Black holes in the extraordinarily distant cosmos are out of tune with their host galaxies, offering insights into their formation