Feel like visiting another star system or dimension? You can do this by traveling through a spacetime portal of a black hole. But you better choose carefully. All black holes are not created equal.
The South Pole Telescope and BICEP telescopes (pictured above) may discover clues that could teach us if there was something else ‘before’ the Big Bang.
Dr. Keith Vanderlinde/NSF
Perhaps precisely because they are so elusive, Fast Radio Bursts have received a lot of attention in the years since their discovery.
The good thing about space is that – even though it has lots of dangerous stuff floating in it, and lots of exploding stars – it’s so big and empty that it almost doesn’t matter.
NASA/CXC/U.Texas
Brad Carter, University of Southern Queensland and Jake Clark, University of Southern Queensland
There are lots of places where it’s much, much hotter than the Sun. And the amazing thing is that this heat also makes new atoms - tiny particles that have made their way long ago from stars to us.
Galaxy images and patient records can be equally confusing. Now a team of astrophysicists have realised their methods could help medical professionals.
A podcast all about nothing. From the importance of doing nothing to the ill-effects of time spent in solitary confinement and what nothing means in space.
Galaxy history revealed by the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA
From a mysterious energy of empty space to parallel universes, cosmology’s view of ‘nothing’ is anything but boring.
Colorful view of universe as seen by Hubble in 2014.
NASA, ESA, H. Teplitz and M. Rafelski (IPAC/Caltech), A. Koekemoer (STScI), R. Windhorst (Arizona State University), and Z. Levay (STScI)
The pull created by a black hole is so strong that if you get too close to one – even if you are travelling away from it at the fastest speed it is possible to go – you will never be able escape.
In fact, some things are slowing the Earth down or could change its spinning in the future.
Shutterstock
Pretty much as soon as we understood what galaxies were, we realised they are all moving away from each other. And the ones that are further away are moving faster. In short, the universe is expanding.
New heavy nuclei are constantly generated in stars and other astronomical bodies.
Erin O’Donnell
People long assumed all the elements we see now were created during the Big Bang. But on May 2, 1952, an astronomer reported spotting new elements coming from an old star and changed our origin story.
The famous cosmologist was closely identified with black holes due to his revolutionary theoretical work explaining some of their mysterious properties.
British theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Professor Stephen Hawking in 2014.
EPA/Andy Rain
Stephen Hawking inspired people with his work on black holes and other mysteries of the universe. Many were quick to pay tribute to the theoretical physicist who died today in the UK, aged 76.
The precious metal is literally extra-terrestrial, produced in the heart of the stars. How and under what conditions? Scientists know more thanks to a double astrophysical observation.
Looking up in the main chamber at SNOLAB’s facility in the Vale Creighton nickel mine in Sudbury, Ont., a giant spherical neutrino sensor array the size of a 10 storey building is used to detect subatomic particles that pass through the earth.
(Handout)
Cosmologists are heading back to their chalkboards as the experiments designed to figure out what this unknown 84 percent of our universe actually is come up empty.