dark energy

By measuring the universe’s emptiest spaces, scientists can study how matter clumps together and how fast it flies apart.

Big Freeze, Big Rip, Big Crunch, Bounce or vacuum decay? Steven Strogatz speaks with theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack about the five ways that scientists think the universe could come to an end.

Reports that the James Webb Space Telescope killed the reigning cosmological model turn out to have been exaggerated. But astronomers still have much to learn from distant galaxies glimpsed by Webb.

Two physicists have calculated that the universe has a higher entropy — and is therefore more likely — than alternative possible universes.

Physicists are reexamining a longstanding assumption: that big stuff consists of smaller stuff.

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

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

Cora Dvorkin discovered new possibilities for what dark matter could be. Now she’s devising unorthodox ways to identify it.

Claudia de Rham showed how theories of “massive gravity” could potentially get rid of the need for dark energy.