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.
The existence of wormholes is not forbidden by our current theories of the universe. So we can say that they do exist in theory.
Marcella Cheng/The Conversation NY-BD-CC
A wormhole is like a tunnel connecting two places in space. They would be incredibly useful and are great for science-fiction stories.
The problem is we haven’t found any evidence of them existing.
Exactly 99 years after Einstein’s theory of general relativity was proven right in our own solar system, scientists show that it also holds true for entire galaxies.
An artist’s rendering of how the first stars in the universe may have looked.
N.R. Fuller, National Science Foundation
Signals from the first stars to form in the universe have been picked up by a table-sized detector in a west Australian desert. The find also hints at an early interaction with dark matter.
Artist’s impression of how the first stars in the universe may have looked.
N.R.Fuller, National Science Foundation
New radio technology has managed to detect the first light in the universe.
Image showing where scientists believe dark matter resides in the galaxy cluster Abell 520
– near the hot gas in the middle, coloured green.
Chandra X-ray Observatory Center
Controversial new study challenges contemporary thinking about what the universe is made of.
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.
Galaxies evolve in mysterious way. But a new study offers a fresh approach to understand them.
Part of the new map of dark matter made from gravitational lensing measurements of 26 million galaxies in the Dark Energy Survey.
Chihway Chang/University of Chicago/DES collaboration
We still can’t see the dark matter thought to make up about a quarter of the universe, but at least now we have a map of its structure.
Most modern spiral galaxies, such as NGC 1300, are thought to have loads of dark matter in their outer regions.
NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)
A podcast on darkness: from why it makes us scared, to what kind of nightlife can thrive in the modern city and an update on the hunt for dark matter.
There are two broad ways to measure the expansion of the universe. One is based on the cosmic microwave background, shown here, along with our own galaxy viewed in microwave wavelengths.
ESA, HFI & LFI consortia (2010)
The universe is expanding faster than expected, but we don’t know what’s driving it. Here are a few of the possible explanations, from dark energy to a modification of general relativity.