The ever-accelerating expansion of the universe may be driven by a mysterious form of matter called “unparticles,” which do not obey the Standard Model of particle physics, a new theoretical paper suggests. Scientists widely acknowledge that the universe is expanding, though the cause of that expansion remains elusive. One of the most popular proposed explanations … Read more
Some of the universe’s oldest black holes swoop past our cosmic neighborhood at least once every decade, moving planets in their wake, a new study suggests. And if scientists can detect them, it would provide the first proof that these black holes exist as dark matter. Black holes, regions of immense gravity that even trap … Read more
In the 1930s, a Swiss astronomer named Fritz Zwicky noticed that galaxies in a distant cluster were orbiting one another much faster than they should have been given the amount of visible mass they had. He proposed than an unseen substance, which he called dark matter, might be tugging gravitationally on these galaxies. Since then, … Read more
A new search for dark matter has turned up empty handed — but, in a silver lining, the effort provided important limits that will help future experiments narrow down the hunt for this elusive substance. Most astronomers believe that dark matter accounts for 85 percent of all mass in the universe, and that its existence … Read more
Astronomers have peered back to the dawn of the cosmos to observe time ticking five times more slowly in the early universe than it does now — finally proving a prediction that Albert Einstein made more than a century ago. Researchers spotted the extreme slow-motion effect in data taken from bright cosmic beacons known as … Read more
The universe has a speed limit, and it’s the speed of light. Nothing can travel faster than light — not even our best spacecraft — according to the laws of physics. So, what is the speed of light? Light moves at an incredible 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per second), equivalent to almost 700 … Read more
What would Bill Nye the Science Guy get our home planet for Earth Day? The ultimate gift: fusion energy. “We need electricity,” Nye told Live Science in an exclusive interview on Thursday (April 20). “We need not only what we can get right now with existing technologies — with wind, and solar and geothermal energy … Read more
Gravity can turn itself into light, but only if space-time behaves in just the right way, a research team has found. Under normal circumstances, you cannot get something from nothing. Specifically, the Standard Model of particle physics, the reigning theory that explains the subatomic zoo of particles, usually forbids the transformation of massless particles into … Read more
Astronomers have discovered one of the largest black holes ever found — an ultramassive monster roughly 30 billion times the mass of the sun — using a space-time trick predicted by Albert Einstein. The colossal black hole, which lurks 2.7 billion light-years from Earth in the brightest galaxy of the galaxy cluster Abell 1201, was … Read more
The universe could, in fact, be a giant doughnut, despite all of the evidence suggesting it’s as flat as a pancake, new research suggests. Strange patterns found in echoes of the Big Bang could be explained by a universe with a more complicated shape, and astronomers have not fully tested the universe’s flatness, the study … Read more
