Cosmology | Astronomy.com

Is it time to rename the Hubble constant?

Joseph Marcus — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Most people associate the discovery that faraway galaxies are receding from us — and thus, that the universe is expanding — with Edwin Hubble, thanks to his landmark 1929 paper. It was one of the most fundamental discoveries in the history of science. But Hubble did not discover the expansion. In the 1910s, a LowellContinue reading "Is it time to rename the Hubble constant?"

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This black hole is gulping material 40 times faster than the theoretical limit

Mark Zastrow — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 16:39:02 +0000

For decades, astronomers have puzzled over how the supermassive black holes residing in the center of galaxies form. Now, researchers may have found the biggest clue yet to how these monstrous objects — weighing millions of solar masses — came to exist. An international team used the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) high sensitivity toContinue reading "This black hole is gulping material 40 times faster than the theoretical limit"

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Dark energy sheds light on life in the cosmos

Mark Zastrow — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 11:00:00 +0000

In the 1960s, celebrated radio astronomer Frank Drake proposed his eponymous equation, which attempted to wrangle with the probability of finding extraterrestrial life — at least, the kind that we could identify through radio broadcasts — somewhere out there in the universe. One of the key parameters of that formulation is the rate of starContinue reading "Dark energy sheds light on life in the cosmos"

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String theory is not dead yet

Tom Siegfried — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 16:24:09 +0000

Scientists seeking the secrets of the universe would like to make a model that shows how all of nature’s forces and particles fit together. It would be nice to do it with Legos. But perhaps a better bet would be connecting everything with strings. Not literal strings, of course — but tiny loops or snippetsContinue reading "String theory is not dead yet"

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JWST spots more light than expected in the early universe

Theo Nicitopoulos — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is well-known for discovering young, bright galaxies in the very early universe. How such regions, bursting with stars, formed so quickly and survived is enticing researchers to rethink cosmic evolution. A recent study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters uses JWST data to probeContinue reading "JWST spots more light than expected in the early universe"

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Scientists discover significant ‘missing matter’ in the gas between galaxy clusters

Alison Klesman — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 16:35:35 +0000

The game is afoot! Astronomers may have found some of the universe’s missing matter, thanks to one team’s cosmic detective work. The case has been open for more than 20 years. In the 1990s and early 2000s, scientists sleuthed out the universe’s contents using observations from the cosmic microwave background radiation and Big Bang models.Continue reading "Scientists discover significant ‘missing matter’ in the gas between galaxy clusters"

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Could black holes create dark energy?

Alison Klesman — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Black holes are the universe’s shadowy figures, with many millions of them roaming unseen in our galaxy alone. These cosmic heavyweights famously destroy anything that wanders too close, tearing stars and other objects to shreds with their immense gravitational pull. But that may not be the end of the story for those doomed objects. AContinue reading "Could black holes create dark energy? "

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What is dark energy?

David J. Eicher — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 16:37:57 +0000

In a 1998 research breakthrough, Saul Perlmutter of the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues in the Supernova Cosmology Project found the expansion rate of the universe is accelerating. Perlmutter and his team made the discovery by observing distant type Ia supernovae, whose brightnesses are well known, at different distances. His team made observationsContinue reading "What is dark energy?"

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What is the universe expanding into?

Astronomy Staff — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 16:00:00 +0000

What is the universe expanding into? Euan TobinEdinburgh, Scotland This excellent question forces us to confront a region beyond the bounds of our intuition, so please bear with me. When you inflate a balloon, the balloon’s membrane moves outward, closer to the boundaries of whatever room encloses it. You can easily visualize this expansion becauseContinue reading "What is the universe expanding into?"

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How Edwin Hubble won the Great Debate

Alison Klesman — Sat, 02 Nov 2024 17:00:00 +0000

By the dawn of the 20th century, not much had changed in the 400 years since Galileo’s discovery of the four jovian moons and his confirmation of Copernicus’ Sun-centered solar system. Through the early 1900s, astronomers disagreed on whether the universe was home to a multitude of galaxies, so-called “island universes,” or contained entirely withinContinue reading "How Edwin Hubble won the Great Debate"

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