Astrophysics
-
NASA has confirmed that our solar system was struck by a gamma-ray burst originating 1.9 billion light-years away that was brighter than any since the beginning of human civilization in a "1 in 10,000 year" event that blinded space satellite sensors.
-
Is the evolution of our nearest planetary neighbor into a nightmarish hellscape typical? If it is, should Earthlings be worried? To find out, astronomers have proposed using the James Webb Space Telescope to look at five exoplanets in the Venus Zone.
-
Millions of planets have sides permanently bathed in the light of their star, and sides always cloaked in darkness. Between these two sides lies the "terminator zone," a logical place to search for extraterrestrial life, says a new study.
-
If you could zoom way out to look at the universe at its largest scale, you’d see that it’s made up of a colossal cosmic web. Now, astronomers have detected shockwaves moving through this web, providing new insights into large-scale magnetic fields.
-
A groundbreaking new study could answer a perplexing astrophysics mystery without complicating our current models. Physicists suggest that black holes could contain a strange form of energy that’s accelerating the expansion of the universe.
-
Astronomers have put together one of the most comprehensive maps of all the matter in the universe. The huge undertaking hints at a slightly smoother universe than we thought, suggesting that something might be missing from our models.
-
Dark matter remains elusive despite decades of searching. Now physicists have proposed a new experiment that would try to find signals by sending atomic clocks to where dark matter should be at its most dense – right near the Sun.
-
Wormholes are a sci-fi staple, and and it's possible that they exist in the real universe. But how would they work? Physicists have now used a quantum processor to simulate a traversable wormhole, teleporting information between two quantum systems.
-
Astrophysicists have observed puzzling behavior in star clusters that defies our current understanding of gravity at cosmic scales. Intriguingly, the observations fit with an alternative theory of gravity that could negate the need for dark matter.
-
Despite making up 85% of the total mass in the universe, dark matter eludes detection. A new study proposes a unique way to look for it using the Earth’s atmosphere as a giant detector for dark matter particles streaming through the air like meteors.
-
The first dark matter detector in the Southern Hemisphere has been officially opened. The Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL) is built in a disused gold mine in Australia, giving it a unique position on the globe for detecting dark matter.
-
Everything has to end eventually – including the universe itself. It might be hard to imagine a catastrophe big enough to affect the entirety of existence, but here are some of the leading hypotheses about how the universe could end, and when.
Load More