James Webb Space Telescope

Astronomers are scouring the cosmos for fingerprints of the invisible — tiny clumps of pure dark matter that might solve a long-standing cosmic mystery.

Giant black holes were supposed to be bit players in the early cosmic story. But recent James Webb Space Telescope observations are finding an unexpected abundance of the beasts.

Theory has it that “Population III” stars brought light to the cosmos. The James Webb Space Telescope may have just glimpsed them.

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.

In a year filled with sweet new observations in astronomy and tantalizing breakthroughs in condensed matter physics, the brand-new space telescope takes the cake.

For Lisa Kaltenegger and her generation of exoplanet astronomers, decades of planning have set the stage for an epochal detection.

The grainy image of a “super-Jupiter” is a sign of what’s to come as the telescope’s exoplanet observations ramp up.

In the days after the mega-telescope started delivering data, astronomers reported new discoveries about galaxies, stars, exoplanets and even Jupiter.

Puzzling particles, quirky (and controversial) quantum computers, and one of the most ambitious science experiments in history marked the year’s milestones.