Universe

In trying to explain the spectacular star trails of the star cluster Palomar 5, astronomers stumbled on a very large trove of black holes.

The most haunting thing about the universe is how empty it is

It's not what you're probably thinking

The answer is a little more complicated than you might expect

Any good space opera needs to take place in a version of reality that, although not necessarily scientifically accurate, at least makes some kind of sense

A simple thought experiment that will shock the socks off you

Reality as we know it spans 63 orders of magnitude in scale, and now all of that is in one book

Even the Earth–sun system radiates gravitational waves, but just how powerful are they?

Guess what these images are and earn your stripes as a cosmic sightseer

Our species just stepped into a cosmic future, yet we still starve and fight each other

Superclusters – regions of space that are densely packed with galaxies – are the biggest structures in the Universe. But where does one end and another begin? And where are we in the picture?

This article was reproduced with permission and was first published on September 3, 2014. It is a Nature Video production.

Tis the season for science fiction fun, but could we even tell if the universe around us was filled with galactic empires and rebel forces?