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astrophysics

Cosmic reionization video.
Abstractions blog

How the Cosmic Dark Ages Snuffed Out All Light

By Dana Najjar
March 2, 2020
Read Later

The recent discovery of some of the first galaxies in the universe illuminates the darkest era in cosmic history.

Antares photograph.
Abstractions blog

New Wrinkle Added to Cosmology’s Hubble Crisis

By Natalie Wolchover
February 26, 2020
Read Later

A problem confronts cosmology: Two independent measurements of the universe’s expansion give incompatible answers. Now a third method, advanced by an astronomy pioneer, appears to bridge the divide.

Computer simulation of gravitational waves produced by a binary neutron star merger.
Abstractions blog

‘Radical Change’ Needed After Latest Neutron Star Collision

By Dana Najjar
February 20, 2020
Read Later

A recent neutron star merger has defied astronomers’ expectations, leading them to question longstanding ideas about neutron stars and the supernovas that create them. “We have to go back to the drawing board.”

Painting of a planet and a star.
exoplanets

New Exoplanet Search Strategy Claims First Discovery

By Nola Taylor Redd
February 18, 2020
Read Later

By watching for a special kind of flare, astronomers have identified the fingerprints of an Earth-size planet orbiting a distant star.

Illustration of interstellar objects entering our solar system
Quantized Columns

The Age of Interstellar Visitors

By Michele Bannister
January 29, 2020
Read Later

As astronomers get better at finding the comets and asteroids of other stars, they’ll learn more about the universe and our place in it.

Art for "Quanta’s Year in Physics (2019)"
2019 in Review

The Year in Physics

By Michael Moyer
December 23, 2019
Read Later

Physicists saw a black hole for the first time, debated the expansion rate of the universe, pondered the origin of time and modeled the end of clouds.

Video simulation of gas around a black hole.
astrophysics

Astronomers Find Black Holes Stirring Up the Biggest Galaxies

By Charlie Wood
December 12, 2019
Read Later

After a space telescope disintegrated, astrophysicists had little hope of understanding how supermassive black holes agitate giant galaxies. Then they invented a hack.

Virginia Trimble at UC Irvine.
Q&A

Virginia Trimble Has Seen the Stars

By Elizabeth Landau
November 11, 2019
Read Later

How a young celebrity became one of the first female astronomers at Caltech, befriended Richard Feynman, and ended up the world’s foremost chronicler of the science of the night sky.

Illustration of three flat sheets, connoting a flat universe, and three balls, connoting a closed universe.
Abstractions blog

What Shape Is the Universe? A New Study Suggests We’ve Got It All Wrong

By Natalie Wolchover
November 4, 2019
Read Later

Most every cosmologist believes the universe is flat. A new analysis argues that it’s closed.


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