New Atlas

Physics Audio available

Astronomers finally find the first molecule ever formed in the universe

Michael Irving April 17, 2019

Astronomers have finally found the very first molecule to ever form in the universe. The helium hydride ion (HeH+) has long been a key theoretical part of how the chemistry of the cosmos kicked off. Now the first unambiguous evidence of the molecule in a planetary nebula has been found.

The planetary nebula NGC 7027, where astronomers found the first unambiguous detection of the helium hydride ...

Space Audio available

13.5 billion year old star was born just after the Big Bang - and it’s in our neighborhood

Michael Irving November 4, 2018

Astronomers have identified one of the oldest stars ever found, which appears to be just one generation removed from the beginning of the universe itself. Being relatively close to Earth, the find could mean our galactic neighborhood is much older than previously thought.

Ultra metal-poor stars such as HD 140283 (pictured) are among the oldest known stars still surviving, ...

Space

Most distant breath of oxygen dates back to the Cosmic Dawn

Michael Irving May 16, 2018

Elements like oxygen, carbon and nitrogen weren’t very common until the first stars had fired up, burnt out and exploded. Now, astronomers using ALMA have detected the most distant – and hence, earliest – signature of oxygen, in a galaxy 13.28 billion light-years away.

"Cosmic Dawn" was the time when the first stars began lighting up the universe, ionizing the ...

Physics

Stephen Hawking's final paper bursts the multiverse bubble with a Holographic Universe theory

Michael Irving May 2, 2018

Renowned physicist Stephen Hawking passed away earlier this year, but his legacy to science will live on. His final theory on the origin of the universe has now been published, and it offers an interesting departure from earlier ideas about the nature of the “multiverse.”

A new theory on the origin of the universe, put forward in the late Stephen Hawking's ...

Space

13.6 billion-year-old radio signals date back to Cosmic Dawn

Michael Irving February 28, 2018

To look through space is to look through time. Astronomers have now peered right back to the “Cosmic Dawn” – when the first stars were beginning to fire up – by picking up an extremely faint radio signal that marks the earliest evidence of hydrogen, just 180 million years after the Big Bang.

An artist's rendition of the very first stars to appear in the Universe, about 180 million ...

Space

Mysterious black hole discovered at the dawn of the universe

Michael Irving December 6, 2017

At a distance of about 13 billion lightyears, the most distant supermassive black hole known so far has been spotted. That incredible distance means it dates back to when the first stars blinked on, which raises the question of how a black hole that big arose so soon after the universe began.

An artist's rendition of the most distant quasar discovered, which accrued a mass of 800 Suns ...

Physics

Why is our universe three dimensional? Cosmic knots could untangle the mystery

Michael Irving October 22, 2017

Next time you’re untangling your earbuds, remember that knots may have played a crucial part in kickstarting our universe, and without them we wouldn’t live in 3D. That’s the strange story pitched by physicists in a new paper, to help plug a few plot holes in the origin story of the universe.

A team of astrophysicists have put forward the theory that knots of energy formed just after ...

Physics

Gravitational anomaly from the beginning of the universe observed on Earth

Michael Irving July 20, 2017

When the universe was a few microseconds old, it was a soupy substance called quark-gluon plasma, exhibiting a host of unusual quantum effects previously only thought to occur just after the Big Bang. For the first time, IBM researchers have now observed a gravitational anomaly in earthly materials

IBM Researchers have observed a gravitational anomaly in a crystal, which was normally believed to only ...

Science

Simulation suggests 68 percent of the universe may not actually exist

Michael Irving March 30, 2017

The Lambda Cold Dark Matter model suggests that 68 percent of the universe is made up of dark energy. But a new study has questioned whether dark energy exists, citing simulations that found that accounting for the structure of the cosmos, the gap in the theory, which dark energy fills, vanishes.

New computer simulations have questioned the existence of dark energy, a so-far theoretical force that is ...

Physics

Expanding universe may render time travel impossible

Michael Irving September 21, 2016

The question of why time moves forwards, and not backwards, has long been on the minds of physicists. Now, a professor at UC Berkeley has a new theory: as the universe expands, it drives the expansion of time, which creates a constant series of new “now” moments.

Professor Richard Muller has put forward a theory that the progression of time is a direct ...