Cosmology

In this episode of The Joy of Why, Thomas Hertog discusses his collaboration with Stephen Hawking on a provocative theory arguing that the laws of physics evolved with the universe, and how this could have shaped a cosmos fit for life.

Tony Tyson’s cameras revealed the universe’s dark contents. Now, with the Rubin Observatory’s 3.2-billion-pixel camera, he’s ready to study dark matter and dark energy in unprecedented detail.

Last year, an enormous map of the cosmos hinted that the engine driving cosmic expansion might be sputtering. Now physicists are back with an even bigger map, and a stronger conclusion.

Is the universe flat and infinite, or something more complex? We can’t say for sure, but a new search strategy is mapping out the subtle signals that could reveal if the universe has a shape.

Physicists discovered strange supersolids, constructed new kinds of superconductors, and continued to make the case that the cosmos is far weirder than anyone suspected.

Astronomers are reveling in the James Webb Space Telescope’s discoveries about the formative epoch of cosmic history.

The largest-ever 3D map of the cosmos hints that the dark energy that’s fueling the universe’s expansion may be weakening. One community of theoretical physicists expected as much.

A long-awaited study of the cosmic expansion rate suggests that when it comes to the Hubble tension, cosmologists are still missing something.

Physicists and cosmologists will have a new probe of primordial processes when Europe launches the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) next decade.