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Galactic Glow, Thought to Be Dark Matter, Now Hints at Hidden Pulsars

November 14, 2017

A number of high-energy anomalies raised hopes that astrophysicists had seen their first direct glimpses of dark matter. New studies suggest a different source may be responsible.

‘Crazy’ Supernova Looks Like a New Kind of Star Death

November 8, 2017

Astronomers are mystified by a strange star explosion in a distant galaxy that might be a relic from an earlier cosmological era.

From the Edge of the Universe to the Inside of a Proton

November 6, 2017

The Zoomable Universe, a new book by the astrobiologist Caleb Scharf, the illustrator Ron Miller and 5W Infographics, tours the universe’s 62 orders of magnitude.

Squishy or Solid? A Neutron Star’s Insides Open to Debate

October 30, 2017

The core of a neutron star is such an extreme environment that physicists can’t agree on what happens inside. But a new space-based experiment — and a few more colliding neutron stars — should reveal whether neutrons themselves break down.

Colliding Neutron Stars Could Settle the Biggest Debate in Cosmology

October 25, 2017

Newly discovered “standard sirens” provide an independent, clean way to measure how fast the universe is expanding.

Newfound Wormhole Allows Information to Escape Black Holes

October 23, 2017

Physicists theorize that a new “traversable” kind of wormhole could resolve a baffling paradox and rescue information that falls into black holes.

Neutron-Star Collision Shakes Space-Time and Lights Up the Sky

October 16, 2017

Astronomers have for the first time matched a gravitational-wave signal to a kilonova’s burst of light, observations that will “go down in the history of astronomy.”

Ultra-Powerful Radio Bursts May Be Getting a Cosmic Boost

October 10, 2017

Repeating radio bursts are among the most mysterious phenomena in the universe. A new theory explores how some of their puzzling properties can be explained by galactic lenses made of plasma.

LIGO Architects Win Nobel Prize in Physics

October 3, 2017

The American physicists Rainer Weiss, Kip Thorne and Barry Barish were honored for dreaming up and realizing the experiment that confirmed the existence of gravitational waves.

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