What's up in

Cosmology

Latest Articles

Four Years On, New Experiment Sees No Sign of ‘Cosmic Dawn’

February 28, 2022

When astronomers tried to confirm a signal from the birth of the first stars after the Big Bang, they saw nothing.

Q&A

In Search of Cracks in Albert Einstein’s Theory of Gravity

February 23, 2022

Celia Escamilla-Rivera is combining large data sets with supercomputers to test general relativity against its little-known competitors.

Any Single Galaxy Reveals the Composition of an Entire Universe

January 20, 2022

In computer simulations of possible universes, researchers have discovered that a neural network can infer the amount of matter in a whole universe by studying just one of its galaxies.

Cosmologists Parry Attacks on the Vaunted Cosmological Principle

December 13, 2021

A central pillar of cosmology — the universe is the same everywhere and in all directions — is surviving a storm of possible evidence against it.

The Webb Space Telescope Will Rewrite Cosmic History. If It Works.

December 3, 2021

The James Webb Space Telescope has the potential to rewrite the history of the cosmos and reshape humanity’s position within it. But first, a lot of things have to work just right.

Laws of Logic Lead to New Restrictions on the Big Bang

November 10, 2021

Physicists are translating commonsense principles into strict mathematical constraints on how our universe must have behaved at the beginning of time.

How Steven Weinberg Transformed Physics and Physicists

August 11, 2021

When Steven Weinberg died last month, the world lost one of its most profound thinkers.

Growing Inventory of Black Holes Offers a Radical Probe of the Cosmos

February 17, 2021

One black hole is nice, but astrophysicists can do a lot more science with 50 of them.

Physicists Study How Universes Might Bubble Up and Collide

January 25, 2021

Since they can’t prod actual universes as they inflate and bump into each other in the hypothetical multiverse, physicists are studying digital and physical analogs of the process.

Get highlights of the most important news delivered to your email inbox